CEA: Nearly $44 Billion Will Be Spent On Gifts This Thanksgiving Weekend

Shoppers will spend $43.7 billion on gifts this Thanksgiving weekend, according to interim results from the Consumer Electronics Association’s annual Black Friday Survey. The findings also suggest that smartphones and tablets were the most purchased consumer electronics devices.

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CEA’s annual telephone survey projects that the average U.S. consumer who shopped or planned to shop—an estimated 120 million adults—will spend $365 on gifts from Thanksgiving Day through Monday. CEA’s 19th annual CE Holiday Purchase Patterns Study, released last month, found that consumers plan to spend an average of $842 on gifts this season.

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Clothing, followed by consumer electronics, were the most popular items purchased this weekend. Through Friday, 63 percent of those shopping purchased clothing and 47 percent bought electronics, according to the CEA Black Friday Survey.

Mobile connected devices were the most popular consumer electronics. The CEA survey found that among those buying electronics, roughly 26 percent bought a smartphone and 22 percent bought a tablet Thursday or Friday. Other popular electronics items were headphones (25 percent), portable media players (22 percent) and video game consoles (20 percent).

Twenty nine percent of U.S. adults—roughly 69.6 million—reporting that they shopped or planned to shop on Black Friday, up from 27 percent a year ago.

Saturday was expected to be the next busiest day of the weekend, according to CEA’s survey, with 21 percent of adults planning to shop.