Consumers increasingly turned online during the Black Friday weekend, boosting traffic at the start of the holiday shopping season.
Nearly 109 million people shopped from their computers and mobile devices from Thursday through Sunday, while about 99 million went to traditional stores, , according to a survey from the National Retail Federation, a trade group. Last year, shoppers were more evenly split, with 103 million browsing online and 102 million in stores.
"The story of the weekend was online increasing over in-store," said Pam Goodfellow, principal analyst at Prosper Insights and Analytics, which analyzes data for the trade group.
Some shoppers, of course, did both. That drove the total number of shoppers during the four-day weekend to more than 154 million _ up from 151 million in 2015, the survey said.
Shoppers spent an average of $289.19, down from $299.60 last year, the survey said. Matthew Shay, chief executive of the trade group, said some promotions were steeper than in 2015. This year, 36 percent of shoppers reported that all of their purchases were sale items; last year, 11 percent of consumers said so.
