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Gift card purchases were down this past weekend compared with the same weekend last year, suggest the results of a survey the National Retail Federation commissioned. Asked about their shopping for the weekend after Thanksgiving, 18.7% of consumers said they purchased a gift card, down from 21% who said they bought gift cards in a similar survey last year. BIGresearch LLC, a market research firm based in Worthington, Ohio, conducted the survey of 3,370 consumers from Nov. 27 to Nov. 29. The results suggest shoppers spent an average of $372.57 during those three days, up 7.2% from $347.55 last year. Respondents said they spent on average $117.29 online, up 26% compared with $93.12 a year ago. Online shopping represented 31.5% of spending compared with 26.8% last year. More than half of respondents, 54.7%, visited discount stores, down slightly from 55.1% who did so last year, and 43% shopped at traditional department stores, up from 38.7% a year ago. The survey did not ask how consumers paid for their purchases, Kathy Grannis, a federation spokesperson, tells CardLine.
