The average amount spent per person from Thursday to Sunday was about $365, more than a 6 percent increase over last year, according to a survey of about 4,300 Americans by the National Retail Federation, a trade group that reported results on Sunday afternoon.
And an estimated 212 million people shopped, up from 195 million last year. That is the highest number of Thanksgiving weekend shoppers since the first survey in 2004.
Spending on discretionary items rather than bargain-basement discounts seemed to help push the weekend total to a high of $45 billion, up from about $41.2 billion recorded in the last two years.
Spending over the holiday weekend usually accounts for about 8 to 9 percent of the season’s sales, but Ellen Davis, a federation spokeswoman, cautioned it was not always a predictor of how busy the holiday season would be. In 2008, one of the worst holiday seasons in recent years, survey respondents said they had spent about $373 on average, a record high.
Read more here: Robust Sales for Holiday Weekend