Specific holiday shopping days are being designated as a way to help combat the decline of traditional, in-person retail purchases, pollster Mallory Newall said on Friday.
“I think that’s why you’ve seen such a big push in recent years for things like Small Business Saturday,” Newall told Hill.TV’s Krystal Ball on “What America’s Thinking.”
“So no longer is it just Black Friday, that’s the one day and it’s done. There’s now Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Giving Tuesday, Cyber Monday,” said Newall, who is research director at Ipsos Public Affairs. “But Small Business Saturday, in particular, I mean you see it here with local businesses here in D.C. really pushing for people to do at least some of their shopping still in person.”
Newall’s comments come as consumers gravitate away from in-store experiences to online shopping.
A new American Barometer survey, conducted by Hill.TV and the HarrisX polling company, found that 58 percent of poll respondents prefer online shopping to making in-store purchases.
However, Small Business Saturday and Black Friday have encouraged shoppers to visit physical retail locations.
The National Retail Federation estimated that 164 million consumers were planning to shop over Thanksgiving weekend this year, with some overlap between days: 116 million people planned to visit stores on Black Friday and 67 million planned to patronize shops on Small Business Saturday.
— Julia Manchester
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