“It felt like a day you looked forward to because it was only once a year, (and) it was something you could only do in person,” Hughes said, 30 years old. “Not everyone was able to do it, but if you did, you kind of cherished it a lot more than you do today.”

Today, she feels like the holidays have lost their luster, she said. Hughes still plans to shop over the weekend, both online and in-store, but says she’s in no rush to finish her holiday shopping and is certainly not tempted to wait in line.

“The discounts are not that high and we have access to everything online,” she said. “It’s not worth staying out for three hours for something I can easily pick up at home.”

It’s true that post-pandemic Black Fridays have been different than those of the early 2000s. Like Hughes, more and more people are choosing to shop online rather than in-store, and retailers have responded by starting the season earlier and earlier each year, spreading their discounts over a longer period. According to a Coresight Research survey, just over half of consumers started their Christmas shopping before November, an increase of eight percentage points year-over-year.

Discounts aren’t what they used to be. Online discount penetration, or the proportion of merchandise on sale, fell to 35% in November, according to data from LSEG and Centric Market Intelligence. This is the lowest rate for November since companies began tracking the data in 2016. The average discount on online merchandise also fell to 34% in November, compared to 39% last November.

But it’s still an important shopping holiday for both consumers and retailers. In 2023, a record 182 million people shopped during the five days from Thanksgiving to Cyber ​​Monday, according to the National Retail Federation, a retail trade group. This year’s Black Friday weekend is expected to break records again. The NRF predicts 183.4 million people will shop online or in-store over the five-day period, as inflation-weary consumers look to take advantage of weekend deals.

Online shopping is taking off

As in previous years, online retailers will be driving strong spending growth this Black Friday weekend. Nearly 70% of respondents to a Deloitte survey said they plan to shop at online-only retailers, up from 57% last year. Respondents also planned to increase their online spending by 15% year over year.

“We’re expecting a very strong holiday season,” Harley Finkelstein, president of Shopify, said in an interview with Barron’s following the release of the company’s third quarter results.

Last year, Shopify, an e-commerce platform that helps businesses sell their products online, generated $9.3 billion in sales over a four-day period from Thanksgiving to Cyber ​​Monday. Finkelstein expects the company to do more than that this year.

Indeed, consumers have already started shopping online, thanks to October sales events such as Amazon.com’s Big Deal Days, Target’s Circle Week and Walmart’s Holiday Deals event. Companies continued to roll out deals throughout November. In the first 24 days of November, consumers spent $77.4 billion online, up 9.6% from last November and trending higher than Adobe’s full-season forecast of growth of 8.4%.

Black Friday weekend is expected to add tens of billions to that figure. Adobe predicts that Cyber ​​Week, the five-day period from Thanksgiving to Cyber ​​Monday, will generate $40.6 billion in online spending, an increase of 7% year-over-year.

“We also expect to perform very well because those days, for some consumers, are still perceived as the day they will get the absolute best discount,” said Vivek Pandya, principal analyst at Adobe Digital Insights. “And also, they had years of training to shop on those days, which helped those days stick around throughout the season.”

The convenience of online shopping has long been a major draw for many consumers. Another reason for the popularity of online sales is that they make it easier to compare prices, Pandya said, which is especially useful as inflation over the past two years has made Americans more price sensitive.

Don’t underestimate the mall

While online shopping is certainly a great time, don’t plan on your local mall being empty. ICSC, a shopping center trade group, surveyed just over 1,000 respondents and found that 82% of them planned to go to the mall during the long holiday weekend. Many will go shopping, but others plan to dine out, watch a movie or meet up with friends and family.

“The reasons to go have changed from just shopping to taking advantage of all the other deals available,” said Stephanie Cegielski, vice president of research at ICSC. “Santa Claus is always a big draw.”