Decoding Our Cyber Monday and Black Friday Habits

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Black Friday is behind us, we’re swimming in a sea of Cyber Monday deals, and H&M just released a Christmas ad directed by Wes Anderson, starring Adrien Brody. Holiday shopping is officially in full swing.

Since this is a crucial time of year for retailers, the flood of markdowns comes with a fresh supply of data about consumers’ habits. Here’s the lowdown on how shoppers are expected to approach today’s online promotions, and how they tackled Black Friday.

You are not alone. 122 million people are expected to snag Cyber Monday deals today, compared to 121 million last year, according to a report from the National Retail Federation (NRF). Over 154 million people shopped over Thanksgiving weekend, up from 151 million in 2015.

Thanksgiving is, largely, for Thanksgiving. Though many retailers have pushed up their Black Friday start times past midnight and well into Thursday, opening the gates early may not be as worthwhile as they’d hoped. The NRF found that in-store traffic before 5 p.m. on Thanksgiving dropped by 19 percent this year. Consumers did turn up eventually, though, because foot traffic was up 1 percent on Thanksgiving overall.

People are increasingly chill about rushing out of the house on Black Friday. A NRF survey published on Sunday found that 29 percent of respondents started their shopping journeys after 10 a.m. on Friday morning, up from 24 percent last year. That seems consistent with data released by Google last week showing that foot traffic in stores tends to peak between noon and 4 p.m. on Black Friday.

Really chill, actually. Thanks to the aforementioned sprawl of Black Friday into Thanksgiving (and often even earlier) and the continued sales online, this retail event isn’t just about one frenzied day of shopping anymore. Marshal Cohen, the NPD Group’s chief retail analyst, wrote on Friday that he’d never seen such a relaxed scene on the morning of Black Friday. Stores that opened early on Thursday tended to have even more lukewarm turnouts the next day, he noted.

But shoppers are inclined to get an early start on Cyber Monday. A NRF survey conducted on Friday and Saturday found that most respondents — 38.9 percent of them — are shopping Cyber Monday first thing in the morning. That leaning makes some sense, since 9-to-5-ers might be more inclined to engage in a little e-comm action than handle all the emails they ignored at the tail end of last week. Productivity’s productivity, right?

People do Black Friday on their phones. This will come as news to absolutely no one who buys stuff in the year 2016, but online and offline shopping are no longer siloed events — in fact, they’re best used in tandem. During Thanksgiving week, the most mobile shopping searches happened on Black Friday, according to data compiled by Google over the weekend. Thanksgiving was the second most popular day for searches, particularly after 8 p.m.