United States: Black Friday breaks sales records, mainly online

Customers line up outside a Best Buy store set to open on Black Friday November 26, 2021, in Westminster, Colorado Michael Ciaglo GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / AFP

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1 min

The Friday after Thanksgiving in the United States is the big day of shopping: Black Friday.

And after the peaks of the Coronavirus pandemic, 2021 broke the sales record. 

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With our correspondent in Houston

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By mid-afternoon Friday, there were 30% more sales than in 2020 (according to Mastercard).

But the trend was online.

Compared to 2019, before the Covid 19 pandemic, in-store sales fell 28.3% this Black Friday.

Online traffic climbed 47.5% on Friday compared to last year, when consumers already preferred to stay at home because of the Covid and many stores had reduced their hours.

But according to Adobe Digital Insights, which analyzes consumption patterns, online sales alone have reached nearly $ 9 billion and could total $ 207 billion by cumulating the months of November and December.

Because Americans have decided this year to spread their purchases and do them instead on the internet, where the Black Friday offers began more than a week before the famous Friday.

And it was less the fears of Covid variants than the distribution problems that guided their choice.

It must be said that according to Adobe, the websites of major distributors already display twice as many out-of-stock items as in 2020 (124%).

Monday, Cyber ​​Monday, specialists expect 10 or 11 billion Internet purchases of computer equipment on this day alone ... for the material still available.

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