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Which Products, Retailers And Channels Won The Holiday Weekend

Though merchants are still tabulating their weekend takes, and we’re still only midway through Cyber Monday, early returns are pointing to the leaders, and followers, of the four-day shopping frenzy.

Here’s a preliminary look at the Thanksgiving/Black Friday/Cyber Monday holiday outcome.

Top-Selling Products: According to the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), electronics were a driving force behind the weekend’s sales, with some 57 million Americans, or 45 percent of adults, buying or planning to buy tech products.

CE plays an even more crucial role online, where 76 percent of all online holiday expenditures go to just 1 percent of product SKUs — and 60 percent of that 1 percent is comprised of tech devices, according to the Adobe Digital Index. Based on aggregated and anonymous data from 150 million visits to 4,500 retail websites, the Adobe division determined the top-five tech hit list:

The Five Best-Selling CE Products Online On Black Friday

*Samsung 4K TVs

*Apple iPad Air 2

*Microsoft Xbox One

*Apple iPad Mini

*Sony PS4

It should be noted, however, that when it came to the sheer number of holiday weekend deals, CE was soundly trounced by Star Wars. According to comparison shopping and cash-back site FatWallet, there were just 280 Black Friday TV deals in ads, compared with over 400 Star Wars offers across all merchandise categories.

Retailers With The Most Buzz: Perhaps not the most scientific measure, but based on a Salesforce analysis of hundreds of millions of social network data sources from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blogs, news sites and other sources for the seven days leading up to Black Friday, the research group pinpointed the retailers with the biggest buzz:

Last Week’s Top Five Retailers By Mention

1. Kohl’s

2. Walmart

3. Amazon

4. REI

5. Target

Top E-tail Share Gainer: If you guessed Amazon you guessed wrong. According to a ChannelAdvisor Black Friday analysis, Google Shopping showed a better than 40 percent increase in same-store sales year over year, compared with a 20.8 percent increase for Amazon, a 1.5 percent increase for eBay, and a 20.3 percent increase in total online comps.

Biggest Loser: Undoubtedly it was Black Friday, which became a victim of retailers’ success at extending the traditional focal point of the holiday selling season with Thanksgiving Day and pre- and post-weekend promotions.

>> On The Scene: Best Buy Tackles Black Friday

“Unlike 10 years ago, we live in a world in which you can shop anywhere at any time,” said Matthew Shay, president/CEO of the National Retail Federation (NRF). “It’s no longer about one day, but a season of digital deals.”

Market research firm ShopperTrak concurred that the confluence of November-long sales events and the advent of mobile shopping has taken a big bite out of Black Friday, as well as Thanksgiving, with preliminary figures pointing to thinner in-store crowds compared with last year.

“Fewer visits on both days reinforce the trend we’ve seen throughout the year, in which shoppers are researching products ahead of time, targeting their store visits, and arriving in-store with the intention of making a purchase,” observed ShopperTrak’s chief revenue officer Kevin Kearns. “And from our data, we saw greater retail sales generated prior to the Black Friday weekend, which is a result of retailers successfully elongating the holiday season.”

Biggest Winner: Undoubtedly it was m-commerce, and smartphone shopping in particular. According to online sales tracker Custora E-Commerce Pulse, mobile shopping accounted for over a third of online orders on Black Friday, or 36.1 percent, up from 30.3 percent last year, while ChannelAdvisor specifically reported a 49 percent increase in smartphone traffic and a 28 percent increase in smartphone orders over Black Friday 2014.

The numbers are even more eye-opening at Walmart.com, which found that about half of all orders placed since Thanksgiving came through a mobile device, and that the channel accounted for more than 70 percent of its traffic over that time.

Related:Everything You Need To Know About Black Friday 2015

Source: National Retail Federation (NRF)

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