They were drawn by retailers' doing things to make shopping easier, including opening stores on Thanksgiving evening, updating mobile shopping apps for smartphones and tablets, and expanding shipping and layaway options.
The survey found they were also spending more, with the average holiday shopper spending $423 over the entire weekend, up from $398 last year.
Total spending over the four-day weekend totaled $59.1 billion, up 12.8 percent from 2011. Despite the overall boost in buying, Black Friday shopping was actually down, with ShopperTrak reporting that sales slipped to $11.2 billion on Friday, down 1.8 percent from last year, likely due to people taking advantage of more stores being open on Thanksgiving evening.
What did see a big boost was online sales, with comScore reporting a 26 percent increase to $1.04 billion on Black Friday compared with a year ago, and an increase of 32 percent on Thanksgiving Day from last year to $633 million.
