Target reveals the most popular items shoppers bought as Thanksgiving shopping took over Black Friday
- Target released a list of items that sold especially well during its Black Friday event on Thanksgiving.
- TVs, video games, Apple products, and various toys all sold especially well during the shopping event.
- Thanksgiving is quickly replacing Black Friday as the kickoff to holiday shopping online.
Thanksgiving Day is over, which means it's time for to tally up the sales.
Target has highlighted the deals that shoppers snapped up the most from stores, which opened at 5 p.m. on Thanksgiving, as well as online, where the sale event began very early Thanksgiving morning. Stores closed at 1 a.m. before opening again at 7 a.m. on Black Friday.
The retailer says the frequency of customers using order pickup, wherein customers order online and pick up items in-store, doubled compared to last year. Last year, it tripled compared to the year before that.
The most popular items sold on Thanksgiving at Target were:
- electronics including TVs, iPads, and the Apple Watch,
- toys including Lego, LOL Surprise!, Playskool Friends, Tickle Me Elmo, Barbie, board games, and Target's famous $10 giant plush teddy bear,
- and video game consoles like the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
Read more: Thanksgiving is killing Black Friday by replacing it
Every year, Thanksgiving becomes more of a focus for Black Friday sales, especially online.
This year, especially, saw a dramatic and unprecedented growth in online sales on Thanksgiving. Shoppers are predicted to spend a record $3.7 billion once the official tally is in, according to Adobe Analytics.
That's up a whopping 29% when compared to 2017. That's a far larger increase than the growth expected for Black Friday and Cyber Monday: 17.2% and 17.6% growth year over year, respectively.
Much of the growth has come from smartphones, which shoppers are using with increasing frequency, especially on Thanksgiving, according to Adobe. This year, smartphones have accounted for 36.7% of all sales, up substantially over the 29.1% share in 2017.
Target says it has seen more customers using its shopping app this year compared to last, with more than double the sales compared to a year ago.
More on Black Friday 2018:
- Shoppers using smartphones under the dinner table have made Thanksgiving one of the biggest days for online shopping
- Thanksgiving has suddenly become one of America's favorite days to shop online
- Walmart is trying desperately to contain the Black Friday chaos by creating what customers are calling a 'maze' - but photos reveal a wild shopping fiasco
- Black Friday deals sold out at stores like Walmart and Target before Friday even began - and people are furious
- This could be the last truly cheap Black Friday, thanks to Trump's trade war