Recently, stores have made a point of keeping their doors shut on Thanksgiving–and even Black Friday–to encourage their employees and customers to spend time with their families. But taking the moral high ground comes at a cost, according to Foursquare, which gathers location data of about 50 million monthly global users of its apps and mines it for ad-targeting and other business insights.
In other words, when stores are open on Thanksgiving, the majority of the population will take the opportunity to shop at them.
It also studied department stores that open at different times on Thanksgiving Day. It found that stores that open earlier drive more visits, and steal significant market share from their competitors, who never recover the volume. JC Penney, which opened at 3 p.m., made 280% more on Thanksgiving than it did on a regular day. Sears, which opened at 6 p.m., made only 90%, which would suggest that customers were choosing to go to department stores that opened earlier. (See a list of store openings and closings on Thanksgiving atBest Black Friday.)
That said, data from GPShopper, which tracks online traffic, shows that consumers are increasingly choosing to do their holiday shopping online, and many prefer to do it outside the narrow Thanksgiving and Black Friday period. So while consumers still take advantage of open stores during Thanksgiving, the sheer volume of shoppers physically going shopping continues to slide downward.
Recognize your brand’s excellence by applying to this year’s Brands That Matter Awards before the early-rate deadline, May 3.