Thousands flock to South Florida malls for Black Friday deals
MIAMI - In what is now a holiday tradition, thousands of South Floridians flocked to South Florida malls on Black Friday to take advantage of discounts on big and small items.
Black Friday kicks off the holiday shopping season and even though the tradition has dwindled a bit in recent years because of the comfort of shopping from home on the internet, local malls were packed on Friday.
On the web, bargain hunters dethroned Amazon as their number one go-to spot.
This year, Walmart is top of mind for holiday shoppers, according to advertising technology company Captify, which tracks more than 1 billion searches a day from websites globally.
Searches for Black Friday discounts on Walmart surged 386% year over year, leapfrogging rival retailer Amazon, which last year ranked first in Captify's survey of most searched retailers on Black Friday.
Following Walmart were Target and Kohl's respectively. Amazon came in fourth.
Retailers are battling for shoppers' eyeballs and wallets at a time when the holiday shopping season is expected to be more subdued than in years past. Americans are expected to pull back on their holiday shopping this year as sky-high inflation squeezes their spending power.
The National Retail Federation said it expects holiday sales during November and December to rise between 6% to 8% from last year. Online sales during the months of November and December are forecast to grow a meager 2.5% to $209.7 billion, compared with an 8.6% increase a year ago, according to Adobe Analytics.
Early signs show the season may not be as gloomy as predicted.
Online sales climbed 2.9% year-over-year to $5.29 billion on Thanksgiving Day, Adobe Analytics said. That's slightly higher than its estimates for growth during the overall holiday season. Black Friday is expected to pull in $9 billion in online sales, a 1% jump from the previous year, according to Adobe.
