It has been coming for years. Now, it is yet another signal that the way many of us prefer to spend money has changed.
Over the Thanksgiving-Black Friday weekend, a million more Americans made purchases online — particularly on mobile phones — than in brick-and-mortar stores, according to the National Retail Federation’s Thanksgiving Weekend Survey.
This was also the first Black Friday where there was more mobile traffic than desktop traffic. Mobile devices accounted for about 57 percent of all online shopping traffic, up 15 percent over last year, according to data from IBM.
We found similar preferences for online transactions in our survey of more than a thousand U.S. churchgoers. Our early findings showed that 60 percent of respondents preferred to give to their churches through electronic options, and that preference extended across all age groups.
In 2006, online sales accounted for a little less than 3 percent of total retail. Since then, the rate of growth has hovered around 15 percent. The tip toward online shopping doesn’t mean that e-commerce is outpacing in-store sales, which still account for 90 percent of retail purchases. But it does indicate how quickly and deeply our habits are changing, in shopping and in other ways we interact online.
Black Friday sales were up 14 percent over last year, and that rise mirrors the increase in online giving the Chronicle of Philanthropy found last year. Online gifts to nonprofits are growing faster than other types of donations, and with consumers clearly moving in that direction it’s evident that merchants, nonprofits and churches need to get there, too.
Another humorous sign that online shopping has gained in popularity is that some of us will pay $5 for nothing, as long as we can buy it online. That was the Black Friday offer from Cards Against Humanity — give them $5 and get absolutely nothing in return.
More than 11,000 online shoppers “bought” the deal — some even purposely overpaid -- and the company raised $71,145. While Cards Against Humanity has a history of making big donations to charitable causes, the cash was split among its 17 employees — about $4,185 each. Claiming the money was just a way to keep the joke alive a little longer for several employees, who then gave hundreds or thousands of dollars to charities and nonprofits.
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