A proper holiday analysis will put any team in a solid position to showcase results to key stakeholders, and allow for the appropriate recognition of top performers.

While final annual traffic data is being compiled, here are five guiding shopper behavior trends that ShopperTrak’s team unearthed in the end-of-year 2017 retail holiday season results. As we’ve noted in earlier posts, we’ve leveraged a subset of our data to generate both our predictions and the results.

Brick-and-mortar traffic was down about 3% from the Sunday before Thanksgiving through the end of the calendar year. That’s a significant improvement over the pre-holiday YTD trend of shopper traffic being down between -5–6% and between -6–7% for both 2016 non-holiday and holiday season, respectively.  Not only was the traffic decline cut in half, but we saw a YOY increase in sales-per-shopper of more than 3%, this holiday.

Together, these factors indicate that consumers are still flocking to shopping centers, and that shoppers are increasing their spend when they get there. Examples of this stunning reversal of retail’s fortunes is already being discussed around large-format stores, such as, Kohl’s, Macy’s, and J.C. Penney’s.  Truly, the data indicates that the retail apocalypse narrative is being exposed as no more than a myth.

Though the final week of the year is not always a significant retail traffic driver, 2017’s particular calendar layout meant that the week after Christmas took on heightened importance. In fact, this year marks the first year since 2014 that one of the Top 10 Busiest Days fell after Dec. 26^th, thereby extending the so-called “holiday” season.

There’s no doubt about it, Black Friday is still the busiest shopping day of the entire year. Though some retail commentators predicted that Super Saturday, and even the Friday before Christmas, would outperform Black Friday, at ShopperTrak, we weren’t buying it. Turns out, Black Friday was 2017’s biggest shopping day of the year by miles — easily surpassing any other day. That said, Super Saturday, with its close proximity to Christmas Day, came in as the 2nd busiest shopping day of the season.

A closer look at the time leading up to Christmas Day, this year, reveals that two different December Saturdays (12/16/17 and 12/23/17) beat last year’s Super Saturday (12/17/16). This is due primarily to the helpful calendar shifts that make up the 2017 December calendar. As we’ve discussed in previous seasonal blogs, Saturdays in December experience increasing traffic volume, in relation to their proximity to Christmas Day.  This intensity was further strengthened because of the additional Saturday that fell between Black Friday and Christmas Day.

Black Friday traffic remained right in line with 2016 traffic, decreasing minimally YOY. Extended Black Friday, which is the combined period of Thanksgiving night and Black Friday, visits were down merely -1.6% YOY. Surprisingly, traffic was impressive at outlet retailers this year, beating 2016 numbers.

Overall, the 2017 retail holiday season results year proved to be quite promising. We’ll be back soon with a final seasonal analysis of the results from our Top 10 Busiest Shopping Days prediction – stay tuned!