This is a roundup of data gathered around the 2012 Black Friday sales event, with a special focus on online sales data.
Every year when the data comes out there are dribs and drabs scattered across a wide variety of studies, sites and posts. I’m going to aggregate them here.
Black Friday 2012 Timing Data
As a specific event, the timing of when Black Friday begins in terms of shopping behavior, provides an opportunity for data gathering.
Context: Qualitative indicators for “Post-Pie” shopping
“EBay recently surveyed more than 1,000 shoppers in the United States about their holiday shopping plans. Almost two thirds said holiday sales should begin after Thanksgiving dinner and respondents said their meals would end, on average, at 5:23 p.m. EST.” Source: Reuters
Behavior: Sales volume over time Thanksgiving and Black Friday
The IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark report tracks sales volume in real time for both days.
Black Friday 2012 Mobile Data
Mobile device usage for shopping was observed by several reporting data sources.
Context: Device ownership going into Black Friday 2012
According to Comscore 119.3 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones (51.0 percent mobile market penetration) during the three months ending in September.
| Top Smartphone Platforms 3 Month Avg. Ending Sep. 2012 vs. 3 Month Avg. Ending Jun. 2012 Total U.S. Smartphone Subscribers Ages 13+ Source: comScore MobiLens |
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| Share (%) of Smartphone Subscribers | |||
| Jun-12 | Sep-12 | Point Change | |
| Total Smartphone Subscribers | 100.0% | 100.0% | N/A |
| 51.6% | 52.5% | 0.9 | |
| Apple | 32.4% | 34.3% | 1.9 |
| RIM | 10.7% | 8.4% | -2.3 |
| Microsoft | 3.8% | 3.6% | -0.2 |
| Symbian | 0.9% | 0.6% | -0.3 |
Source: Comscore
Behavior: Mobile and Mobile OS data for Black Friday 2012
BBMC: “The Branding Brand Mobile Commerce Index is a compilation of 66 mobile sites developed by Branding Brand for retailers across a variety of industries including apparel, health and beauty, and home goods.”
IBM: “This data is the result of cloud-based analytics findings from IBM.” No sample size indicators given.
| Black Friday 2012: Mobile data | ||||
| Reach Metrics | Sum/Total/Avgs | Android | iOS | Source |
| Mobile’s share of all commerce traffic | 20.44% | – | – | BBMC |
| Share of all traffic by mobile platform | 23.99%* | 5.53% | 18.4%* | IBM |
| Mobile visitors | 3,513,367 | 32% | 63% | BBMC |
| Conversion Metrics | ||||
| Mobile’s share of site sales | 16.26% | – | – | IBM |
| Orders | 50,905 | 29% | 69% | BBMC |
| Items per order | 5.56 | – | – | IBM |
| Average order value | $78.92 | 80.37 | $75.43 | BBMC |
| Average order value | $181.22 | – | – | IBM |
Black Friday 2012 Social Data
