Holiday Shopping's Best Performers So Far

E-Commerce Vs. Brick And Mortar

In a release, Adobe said online sales during the holiday shopping season thus far, which it defines as between November 1 and November 28, are estimated at $33.9 billion, up 7.4 percent year-over-year.

Meanwhile, the National Retail Federation's estimates pitch the number of shoppers during the Thanksgiving weekend (November 24-27) at 154 million, up from 151 million in 2015. The NRF's release said 44 percent of those who shopped during the weekend went online compared to 40 percent, who resorted to in-store purchases.

Top Sellers

Adobe's survey showed that the five best selling toys in terms of quantity sold on Cyber Monday were:

• Lego sets.
• Shopkins.
• Hasbro's Nerf.
• Mattel's Barbie.
• Live Pets.

Among electronic products, winners were:

• Sony PlayStation 4.
• Microsoft Xbox.
• Samsung 4k TVs.
• Apple iPads.
• Amazon Fire.

Out-of-stock items during the Cyber Monday sales were:

• Beats By Dr. Dre Headphones.
• Garmin Vivofit Jr.
• Nintendo 2DS with Yo-Kai Watch Game.
• Dell Inspiron 15 3000 Series.
• Hot Wheels Super 6 Lane Raceway.
• Fisher-Price Thomas & Friends Take-n-Play Thomas' Favorite Friends.
• Shopkins Kinstructions Ice Cream Shop for toys.
• Nikon D5300.
• KitchenAid Professional.

Giving details of online sales during Thanksgiving weekend, Adobe said about $9.36 billion worth of sales materialized during the period, up 16.4 percent. Black Friday online sales hit a record $3.34 billion, up 21.6 percent growth. Thanksgiving Day sales were at $2 billion compared to the $4.1 billion for Saturday and Sunday combined.

Category Winners

Now to the overall winners of the season category-wise:

• Video Game Console: PlayStation 4.
• Video Game Sales: Pokémon Sun & Moon.
TV: Samsung 4K.
• Tablets: iPad Air 2.

Meanwhile, BMO Capital Market analyst Gerrick Johnson is of the view that among the Big three U.S. toy retailers, Toys "R" US had the most foot traffic due to its broadest array of doorbuster and Black Friday deals. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. WMT was the second busiest toy store, despite running the fewest Black Friday deals on toys. According to BMO, the least visited toy store was that of Target Corporation TGT despite offering some very good deals on toys.

At last check, SPDR S&P Retail (ETF) XRT was edging down 0.20 percent to 45.98.