Black Friday Was Disappointing

Retail spending on Black Friday declined 2.9 percent, the first such drop in four years.

Though purchases both at stores and on websites reached $57.4 billion during the four-day weekend beginning with Thanksgiving Day, and total traffic was 2 million more shoppers than a year earlier, the average consumer’s spending dropped 3.9 percent to $407.02, according to a survey commissioned by the National Retail Federation.

“Retailers didn’t get what they wanted from Black Friday and they will need to make it up in the next three weeks,” analyst Poonam Goyal told Bloomberg News. “There will be some panic sales.”