What Consumers Are Buying on Black Friday

Online sales are expected to rise again this weekend as all those promised Black Friday deals finally kick-in. Many retailers, including Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) have been running early online specials for most of the past week, and these shoppers have not only been buying, but talking about what they’re buying.

IBM’s Watson data analytics program has identified the most popular products based on what consumers are saying about the products and how consumers are actually spending their money. With mobile shoppers leading the way, the top products on Black Friday shopping lists are the Apple Watch from Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL); TVs from Samsung, LG Electronics, and Sony Corp. (NYSE: SNE); and the Surface Pro 4 from Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT).

What other products are consumers talking about? Apple’s Beats by Dre headphones, Jordan Shoes from Nike Inc. (NYSE: NKE), Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo Wii U, and Personal Robots from MeccaNoid. And the fastest trending topics are laptop computers from Toshiba and Asus, Disney Princess Legos, NordicTrack treadmills, and Klipsch speakers.

IBM’s Watson also identified some trends from Thanksgiving Day shoppers:

• Online sales for Thanksgiving rose 26% over the same day in 2014, with consumers spending $123.45 per order
• Mobile traffic reached nearly 60% of all online traffic, an increase of 14.8% over 2014. Mobile sales rose to 40% of all online sales, up 23.8% over Thanksgiving Day 2014.
• Smartphones accounted for 46.7% of all online traffic versus tablets with 13.7% of traffic. Smartphones also surpassed tablets in sales, 23.9% compared to 16.1%.

Compared with Tuesday, spending fell from $135.20 per order, a drop of nearly $13, while mobile traffic jumped from 48% to 60% of all online traffic and mobile sales increased from 36% of all online sales to 40%. Smartphones and tablets also increased their shares of traffic and sales compared with Tuesday’s totals.

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