Brick-and-Mortar Stores Fail to Keep Pace with Online Channels Over Thanksgiving Weekend

SAN JOSE, Calif., Nov. 30, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- RetailNext Inc., the worldwide market leader in IoT smart store analytics for optimizing shopper experiences at brick-and-mortar retail stores, today announced its final Holiday flash update for retail performance over the Thanksgiving and Black Friday weekend, reporting a decrease in U.S. store sales of 4.2 percent on a 4.4 percent decline in store traffic over the same period a year ago. 

"Brick-and-mortar sales and traffic numbers tell only part of the retail story, as many brands saw tremendous lift in their online channels that will positively impact overall performance, and Black Friday weekend was consistent with the expectations for a previously forecasted 3.2 percent rise in seasonal sales," said Shelley E. Kohan, vice president of retail consulting at RetailNext. "If anything, the weekend results underlie the importance of brands effectively converging digital and physical channels to deliver a single, seamless shopping experience to consumers, particularly during the high-volume holiday season, as well as engaging store traffic to ensure conversion somewhere along a brand's many shopper touchpoints."

"Average unit retail (AUR) over the weekend fell 10.5 percent compared to a year ago, and was indicative of the heavy price promotion strategies brands deployed to cut through the 'noise' of the holiday weekend," continued Kohan. "Those strategies led to some of the early holiday season winners including off-price discount retailers, outlets and warehouse clubs, but generally did no favors to department stores, specialty apparel and other segments."

"Overall, it's important to recognize that results for physical retail were in line with expectations considering the hangover from Election 2016, the ease and convenience of online shopping and the retail industry's own promotional creep that has seen Black Friday quickly evolve from first a single-day event to a weekend, then to a week and now on to a month-long event."

The RetailNext Retail Performance Pulse is a monthly composite of key in-store metrics developed from specialty and large format retail stores on the RetailNext analytics platform and located within the continental United States. The complete Pulse report for the month ending November 26 on retail's 4-5-4 calendar will be available for free download later this week at http://www.retailnext.net.

About RetailNext
The first retail vertical IoT platform to bring e-commerce-style smart store shopper analytics to brick-and-mortar stores, brands and malls, RetailNext is a pioneer in focusing entirely on optimizing the shopper experience. Through its centralized SaaS platform, RetailNext automatically collects and analyzes shopper behavior data, providing retailers with insight to improve the shopper experience real time.

More than 300 retailers in over 60 countries have adopted RetailNext's analytics software and retail expertise to better understand the shopper journey in order to increase same-store sales, reduce theft and eliminate unnecessary costs. RetailNext is headquartered in San Jose, Calif. Learn more at www.retailnext.net.

RetailNext Inc. and RetailNext are trademarks of RetailNext Inc. in the United States.

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SOURCE RetailNext Inc.

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