Middle Market Digest: This Week in the South and Mountain Regions

Consumers made $12.75 billion in online retail purchases during the five-day period from Thanksgiving Day to Cyber Monday, according to a study by Adobe. This represents a 14.7% increase from the same period last year. Black Friday registered the greatest growth in online sales, rising nearly a quarter (21.6%) above 2015’s level. And, a record 40% of online sales on Thanksgiving Day occurred on mobile devices, according to Adobe. Of the $771 million spent via mobile, 67.5% occurred through smartphones and 32.5% on tablets.

This growth highlights the consumer trend towards online retail, but not necessarily away from brick-and-mortar shopping. The majority of these online purchases were made from established retailers with brick-and-mortar locations, according to ICSC. Many of the nation’s largest physical retailers invested heavily in expanding e-commerce offers in 2016, which both facilitated holiday online spending growth and helped to capture more of it.