140 million shoppers to take advantage of Thanksgiving weekend deals

Americans are readying for the upcoming Thanksgiving weekend by making sure they have a menu for their family gathering and a complete shopping list for their weekend shopping activities.

According to the National Retail Federation’s Thanksgiving Weekend Expectations survey conducted by Prosper Insights & Analytics, which provides a preliminary look at shopping expectations over Thanksgiving weekend, six in 10 (61.1%) say they will or may shop either Thursday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday, which equates to more than 140.1 million unique shoppers.

Expectations are similar to last year’s preliminary survey results of 140.3 million.

Specifically, 67.6 million holiday shoppers (29.5%) say they will shop, down slightly from 69.4 million who planned to do so last year, and 72.5 million (31.6%) say they will wait and see if the deals are worth it before they decide, up 2 percent over last year’s 71 million “maybe” shoppers.

“Consumers today want more than just the discounts they’ve been showered with since the start of the recession; they want exclusive offerings and a good reason to spend their discretionary budgets,” said NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay. “We could witness a sea change this holiday season as consumers’ reliance on extremely deep discounts over the biggest shopping weekend of the year shifts to more of a ‘wait- and-see’ mentality around what retailers will be offering on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday. We are positive retailers have a few tricks up their sleeve that will draw their customers to their stores and websites, deciding the deals are worth it after all.”

To view the entire survey results, click here.