ARLINGTON, VA. — New data released today by the Consumer Electronics Association found that 61 percent of U.S. adults plan to shop during the Thanksgiving holiday, the biggest shopping weekend of the year. CEA’s “Pre-Black Friday Survey” also found that 31 percent of shoppers plan to buy consumer electronics products this weekend. Among those planning to purchase electronics, most—30 percent—expect to buy a tablet computer, followed closely by laptop computers (29 percent), video game consoles (29 percent) and televisions (22 percent).
“Buying tech during Black Friday has become the new Thanksgiving weekend tradition,” said Shawn DuBravac, CEA’s chief economist and senior director of research. “Tech is vying to surpass other popular product categories, such as clothing, this holiday shopping weekend. New product announcements in gaming, computing and mobile devices, coupled with generally improving economic conditions, are driving consumer excitement to get out and shop.”
CEA’s study found that Black Friday is expected to be the busiest shopping day of the weekend. Overall, the highest percentage—37 percent—of U.S. adults plan to shop this Friday, with Small Business Saturday—35 percent—and Cyber Monday—26 percent—as the next most popular shopping days of the weekend.
The fewest number of individuals—13 percent—plan to shop on Thanksgiving Day this year, on par with 2012. More than half of consumers—54 percent—indicate they think retailers are opening stores too early on Thanksgiving, with 36 percent who don’t.
Americans plan to spend $258 on average this weekend, 18 percent higher than expectations heading into the 2012 Thanksgiving weekend.
While mobile connected devices will be among the most wanted gifts this holiday season, shoppers also plan to use these devices and others to help them research sales and discounts. Overall, 67 percent of U.S. adults will use an CE device to help them shop this weekend. Consumers plan to use laptops (38 percent) to learn about sales and discounts followed by smartphones (34 percent), desktops (31 percent) and tablets (21 percent). Thirty-seven percent of U.S. adults will use their CE device to make online purchases either by website or app, up ten percentage points from last year.
When deciding where to purchase CE products this weekend, consumers overwhelmingly indicated price was the more important consideration (69 percent) over ease of shopping (19 percent) while 11 percent indicated both are equally important.
The survey represents the findings of a quantitative study administered via telephone interviews between Nov. 21 and 24, 2013 to two national probability samples, which, when combined, consists of 1,002 U.S. adults; 652 interviews were conducted by landline phone, and 350 interviews by cellphone. The margin of sampling error at 95 percent confidence for aggregate results is +/- 3.1 percent.
