United States, December 1: Shoppers eagerly look forward to Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving for low prices and eye-popping discounts. Black Friday marks the start of the holiday shopping season and this year it was the Wii game console, which appeared as the hottest item that people loved to own or gift to others.
The price comparison website PriceGrabber.com released a list of the most searched products on eBay during Black Friday and found Wii on the number one spot and Wii Fit at number four. So far, 3,171 Wiis’ and 1,059 Wii Fits have been sold on eBay for an average price of $349 and $140 respectively.
Not only for Wii, but Black Friday boosted the sales of many other popular electronic gadgets as well, despite the worldwide financial crisis. Market watchers attribute this to the widespread discounting that motivates many anxious sellers.
Ron LaPierre, president of PriceGrabber said, "Consumers are responding to aggressive promotions and price drops on popular electronics."
Other products that topped the sales for Black Friday mainly belong to consumer electronics category. Sales of Blu-ray/HD-DVD players increased by 147 percent from 2007 while headphones’ sales increased by 103 percent.
An online shopping website, Shopping.com, had a GPS sold every 9 minutes and an MP3 every 11 minutes.
Apple also had a good Black Friday. According to the Apple 2.0 blog, 10 out of the 15 top selling electronic products from Amazon.com were Apple products. Its iPod Touch was the top-selling product.
This Black Friday weekend has recorded 3 percent increase in retail sales from last year. Online shopping increased by 11 percent compared to last year. Shoppertrak RCT gave an estimate of $10.6 billion total sales in the United States for Black Friday alone.
However, despite the success of Black Friday, sellers are still not assured of good sales for the remaining days of this year.
Bill Martin, co-founder of ShopperTrak stated, "While this is an encouraging start for retailers, there's no guarantee these deep discounts will continue after Black Friday weekend, which could slow spending. Additionally, consumers have just 27 days to shop this year as opposed to 32 in 2007, which may catch some procrastinating consumers off guard, leading to lower sales levels."
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