With Discounts on Offer, Shoppers Began to Bite

Data on spending this week shows consumers are being drawn to discounts. Online Black Friday sales picked up at a faster pace this year than in-store shopping, Mastercard reported.

For weeks, businesses have been sending consumers endless offers of discounts on all sorts of items. On this long weekend, consumers finally bit.

Data released on Saturday showed that Americans took advantage of big deals on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, opening their wallets, though they were selective about what they bought.

Shoppers spent $10.8 billion online on Friday, according to data on Saturday from Adobe Analytics. That’s on top of $6.1 billion spent online on Thursday, around 9 percent more than the previous year.

Another metric from Mastercard SpendingPulse, which measures retail sales across all forms of payment, found that online sales on Black Friday had increased by nearly 15 percent but that in-store sales had increased by only 0.7 percent, for an overall increase of 3.4 percent. It said that jewelry, electronics and apparel were the top purchases, with discounts playing a role in consumer decisions.

“I think it’s the consumer being mindful about how they’re using their dollar and purchasing power, knowing they have so many choices,” said Michelle Meyer, chief economist at the Mastercard Economics Institute. She said that in-store spending had been strong going into the holiday weekend, but on Black Friday itself, it was “sluggish.”

These numbers offer an early look at how the holiday shopping season has gone so far. The National Retail Federation is set to update its figures next week, and those numbers will give a fuller accounting.