Visit Our Sponsors |
The numbers, which cover Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday and Small Business Saturday plus Sunday, include both in-store and online shopping and are up from 58.7 percent or 135.8 million people last year.
The survey found that 21 percent of weekend shoppers plan to shop on Thanksgiving Day, nearly the same as last year’s 22 percent. But Black Friday will remain the busiest day of the holiday weekend with 74 percent planning to shop that day, the same as in 2015. A substantial 47 percent are expected to shop on Saturday; of those shoppers, 24 percent say they will be doing so specifically to support Small Business Saturday, up from 22 percent last year. On Sunday, 24 percent expect to shop.
According to the survey, 77 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds and 76 percent of 25- to 34-year-olds plan to shop over the weekend. As with shoppers overall, Black Friday is the day most millennial weekend shoppers plan to shop - 86 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds and 78 percent of 25- to 34-year-olds.
"Millennials continue to drive the trend of hitting the stores - both on their feet and online - as soon as the turkey is finished," Prosper principal analyst Pam Goodfellow said. "Whether they're hoping to find gifts for themselves or for the folks on their lists, they will do their research to find the best deals of the weekend and have allotted a large part of their holiday budget for Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday spending."
RELATED CONTENT
RELATED VIDEOS
Timely, incisive articles delivered directly to your inbox.