Black Friday 

Posted on 27 March 2023

Placer.ai data found Black Friday store foot traffic in the U.S. decreased among most categories and retailers compared with 2021 and pre-pandemic 2019. Department stores had the largest drop in Black Friday foot traffic of eight categories Placer.ai data measured.

Key takeaways:

  • Indoor malls this year had 2.3% less foot traffic on Black Friday than in 2021 and 14.2% less than in 2019, according to Placer.ai. 
  • Ulta had 16.5% more foot traffic this year than in 2021, and 31.0% more than in 2019.

Data from location data vendor Placer.ai finds that many shopping centers and physical store had less foot traffic on Black Friday compared with 2021 and pre-pandemic 2019. At the same time, however, Black Friday online sales reached a record-setting $9.12 billion this year.  

196.7 million consumers in the United States shopped in-store and online during the Cyber 5 period, according to an annual survey the National Retail Federation and Prosper Insights & Analytics released. That’s nearly 17 million more than last year, and the most since NRF began tracking this data in 2017, NRF said.