Attention shoppers - Black Friday is still a big deal; forecasters (again) expect record sales for the holidays

CLEVELAND, Ohio — It’s no longer the unofficial start of the holiday shopping season. But Black Friday and, to a lesser extent, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday are still expected to be huge shopping days in 2023.

In fact, the National Retail Federation is estimating that 182 million people will shop in store or online from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, according to its annual survey with Prosper Insights and Analytics. That would be up from 166 million shoppers last year and would be the highest total seen since the NRF started tracking this in 2017.

This is just one of many predictions from organizations like the NRF, the Ohio Council of Retail Merchants and Sensormatic Solutions, a retail consulting and analytics firm. But all predictions point to this shopping season still being quite busy — even though “holiday” deals have been popping up since before Halloween.

“Black Friday really is as important today as it’s ever been,” said Grant Gustafson, head of Retail Consulting & Analytics at Sensormatic Solutions.

Sensormatic Solutions tracks in-store traffic using sensors inside retail locations. It’s predicting, like it does each year, that Black Friday will be the biggest in-person shopping day. The real contest is for secondthrough 10th in its rankings.

This year it predicts that Dec. 23, the Saturday before Christmas, will be the secondbusiest and that this Saturday, often marketed as Small Business Saturday, will be the fifth busiest.

Big shopping days remain important for retailers, Gustafson said.

Throughout this year retailers have seen a 2% drop in in-person traffic, according to Sensormatic. And the firm is forecasting that the trend will continue — with in-store traffic this holiday season either staying steady or shrinking by up to 3.5%.

Sensormatic doesn’t release exact figures.

The National Retail Federation expects 130.7 million shoppers on Black Friday and 65.6 million on Saturday. These figures include e-commerce.

When does holiday shopping start?

This big turnout is expected despite the fact that holiday shopping started a long time ago. In another survey by the NRF, 43% of holiday shoppers said they generally started shopping before November.

“They’ve embraced an earlier kickoff to the holiday season,” Matt Shay, the NRF’s CEO, said during the organization’s holiday sales forecast. He added that as consumers shop earlier, retailers have started both their deals and their seasonal hiring earlier.

That hasn’t changed thefact that consumers are still looking for deals this weekend, Gustafsson said.

He said Black Friday is a good barometer for the rest of the shopping season. And the traffic retailers see this weekend should offer good insights on how the rest of the shopping season will go.

The NRF is predicting a record for holiday spending, somewhere between $957 billion and $967 billion. But records are relative considering inflation. This recordhas been broken each year since 2010.

The forecast is calling for 3% to 4% growth versus 2022, which the NRF says is consistent with pre-pandemic levels. On average, holiday spending increasedby 3.6% each year from 2010 to 2019.

Holiday spending grew by 9.3% in 2020 and 13.5% in 2021, in the wake of the pandemic. Spending grew by just 5.3% in 2022.

These numbers are not adjusted for inflation.

Jack Kleinhenz, the Cleveland-based chief economist for the NRF, said during a press call about the forecast that the economy is holding together well, and that consumers remain in the driver’s seat, despite worries about a recession, inflation and high interest rates.

“The last few years the holiday shopping season has been filled with unmatched peculiarities for consumers and retailers alike, and this year there’s a whole new set of dynamics in place,” Kleinhenz said during a conference call about the NRF’s forecast.

In a monthly report for the NRF, he wrote that there’s “a disconnect between solid consumer spending and weak consumer confidence.” While people tend to have worries about the economy, they have continued to spend.

Spending locally

The NRF’s forecast looks at spending from Nov. 1 through Dec. 31, and it excludes purchases like fuel, vehicles and groceries.

Ohio is a slightly different story, and Cleveland may see shopping trends go in the other direction.

Holiday sales in the Cleveland metro area are forecasted to total $5.48 billion, shrinking 4.4% from the $5.73 billion spent last year, according to a joint forecast from the Ohio Council of Retail Merchants and the University of Cincinnati’s Economics Center.

This forecast — which looks at October through December — says Ohio is projected to see nearly $32.2 billion in sales, a 0.7% increase from the $32 billion spent last year.

This forecast from the Ohio Council of Retail Merchants and the University of Cincinnati’s Economics Center says Ohio consumers are facing several headwinds. This is after Ohio saw 21.7% holiday spending growth in 2020, 6.8% growth in 2021 and 4.5% growth in 2022.