Black Friday shopping sets spending record

As we all know Black Friday is the busiest shopping day in the country.  But black Friday is also turning ever closer into dark grey Thanksgiving night. Which is insanity if you ask me?!!!

Thinking about Black Friday I started wondering how certain retail stores did this year and the industry as a whole.  I found an article in the online version of the Milwaukee Sentinel Journal entitled, Black Friday shopping sets spending, e-commerce records.  Here is a link to the article

The articled stated numerous facts on how Black Friday is trending later in the evening on Thanksgiving and also how more and more people are choosing to spend money online.

Here are some interesting facts:

• An estimated 35 million people had shopped (in line) in stores or online by midnight on Black Friday, up from 29 million last year, according to the NRF.
•  E-commerce spending reached well over $1 billion on Black Friday, making it the biggest online spending day in 2012. That's up 26% compared with last year
•  The average person spent $172.42 online this weekend, according to comScore. About 40.7% of customers' Black Friday dough was spent online, according to the NRF, up from 37.8% in 2011

The numbers don't include cyber Monday sales which can show greater increases for internet sales.  With less people doing their Black Friday shopping in stores how can marketers focus their efforts on snatching up some of the increased internet sales??? In the future will we even need to go to the store to shop on Black Friday, or will we be able to do it from the comfort of our own homes????