Retail stores posted poor results compared to e-commerce based on new research. According to Reuters:
The Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday kickoff of the U.S. holiday shopping season showed the increasing preference for online purchases, as more Americans opted to stay home and use their smartphones while sales and traffic at brick-and-mortar stores declined
The ongoing shift to online shopping has forced retailers across the country to invest heavily in boosting their e-commerce businesses, and also highlights the impact of early holiday promotions and year-round deals on consumer spending.
Toys R Us hopes to have success in Asia. According to The Wall Street Journal:
Toys ‘R’ Us staff are filling shelves this holiday season at hundreds of stores across Asia, where the brand has been given new life after being sold off by the bankrupt American toy retailer.
The Asia business is planning to expand next year with dozens more stores from China to Japan, using a different playbook that focuses on smaller shops with fewer options.
Pay per view customers of a golf match between Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson will get their money back because the streaming system failed. According to CNBC:
A technical glitch that allowed viewers to watch an epic match between golf greats Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson for free will result in refunds for most of those who paid for the event.
The duel, which was broadcast via Turner’s Bleacher Report, suffered a problem on its platform that allowed viewers to access the match for free, after some who paid couldn’t see it at all.
Accorcing to research, Black Friday shopping set a record. CNBC reports:
More shoppers turned to the internet for deals to kick off the holiday shopping season, new data showed Saturday, buying everything from apparel to flat-screen TVs and spending record amounts in the process.
Black Friday pulled in $6.22 billion in online sales, up 23.6 percent from a year ago and setting a new high, according to Adobe Analytics, which tracks transactions for 80 of the top 100 internet retailers in the U.S. like Walmart and Amazon. Those figures arrived as many retailers have pushed big digital deals, days in advance of the holiday weekend.
Crude crashes toward $50. According to CNN Business:
Friday brought another round of dramatic price cuts in the oil patch.
US oil prices plummeted as much as 7% and sank deeper into a bear market that has alarmed investors and made drivers around the world happy.
The latest wave of selling knocked crude below $51 a barrel for the first time since October 2017
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