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Black Friday Shoppers to Buy Before 10 a.m.

By Staff -- Gifts and Dec, 11/19/2007 1:56:00 PM

Purchase, NY — Last year the day after Thanksgiving was indeed the busiest holiday shopping day in brick-and-mortar department, discount, clothing, electronics/appliances and sporting goods/toy stores, according to the MasterCard Worldwide Holiday Shopping Insights Report, commissioned by MasterCard Worldwide and conducted by Ipsos-Insight Corp.

More than one-third of MasterCard payment transactions occur before 10 a.m., said Larry Flanagan, chief marketing officer of MasterCard Worldwide, adding that in some categories the early bird factor was even higher: “For electronics and appliances stores, nearly half of their purchase volume occurs before 10 a.m. — with the early hour from 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. being the busiest.”

But though the Monday after Thanksgiving has come, in recent years, to be commonly called “Cyber Monday,” MasterCard forecasts that the real busiest online holiday shopping day will occur quite a bit later, on December 10. (In 2005, the busiest online shopping day measured by MasterCard-processed e-commerce transactions was Dec. 5; in 2006, it was a week later.)

According to the report, 69 percent of shoppers will shop at least partly online this year. That includes new online customers: more than one-quarter of shoppers who did not shop online for holiday gifts last year intend to do so this year. On average, consumers who plan to shop online at all intend to make 40 percent of their purchases online, spending $253. (U.S. consumers plan to spend approximately $610 on holiday gifts this year.) Books, CDs and DVDs will be the most common online purchases.

Gift cards top MasterCard’s list of popular gifts this year, rising 10 percent; one-third of respondents said they intend to spend most of their holiday budgets on gift cards or certificates this year, more than on clothing and toys. And that’s not the only kind of card gaining popularity: 34 percent of survey respondents said they intend to use debit cards most often to pay for holiday gifts – beating credit cards, at 29 percent, and cash at 22 percent.

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