Move over, Black Friday—Super Saturday is now a bigger deal
Black Friday no longer reigns as the biggest shopping day of the holiday season, according to data compiled by Foursquare.
The social app determined that the Saturday before Christmas (called “Super Saturday” by retailers) sees more shoppers walking through store doors. Foursquare reached that conclusion after tracking its 50 million active users running the app in the background as they visited stores for over five minutes.
“We've mapped every significant business in the world thanks to our members,” said Jeff Glueck, the company’s chief operating officer. “We're able to build an aggregate picture of how societal trends are changing, and how people are moving through the physical world.”
One of the trends Foursquare sees is a spreading out of shopping during the holiday season. Glueck suspects this is the result of consumers going online or using mobile devices to find deals.
“You don't just have Black Friday, you have really Black November,” he said. “There are just so many more choices, and people are spreading out their shopping over the whole holiday season online and offline. But still, last year, 134 million Americans went to a store over this post Thanksgiving weekend, so it's still a huge physical shopping weekend.”
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The Friday after Thanksgiving is still key for high-priced items, noted Glueck. “Black Friday is particularly really big for electronics stores, where they see a 159% of normal traffic.”
That may mean good news for some retailers. Foursquare data showed Best Buy (BBY) saw a 400% increase in foot traffic on Black Friday compared to an average Friday.
But Glueck sees a different type of shopper on the Saturday before Christmas. “The big winners on Super Saturday that last weekend when you're running out of time are the department stores and the like – these [are] big box retailers,” he said. “We think that's because there are all those items on the list left to cross off, and a one-stop shop is more valued if you're running out of time.”
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