• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, November 26, 2018

A funny thing happened to me on Thanksgiving Day this year. I'm not known for making impulse purchases. In fact those who know me say I analyze every dollar I spend. But, alas, I admit, I made an impulse buy at Macy’s on Thanksgiving Day.

In fact, after searching online for the best deals on several brands of bed sheets, I made an impulse visit to the Macy's physical store as well. I had planned to go shopping on Black Friday, but instead I found myself dragging my daughter into Macy’s on Thursday evening after we cleaned up the dinner dishes and put the turkey, ham and all the fixings in the refrigerator.

Salesforce Commerce Cloud reported 18% year-over-year growth on Thanksgiving Day online and 13% YoY growth on Black Friday. The numbers represent online sales, with mobile devices accounting for 67% of all digital traffic, compared with 61% in 2017.

I also made a purchase from my iPhone Thursday. Salesforce estimates mobile orders were 49% compared with 42% last year. As Salesforce notes, Cyber Monday was historically the day for the best deals online, with a 30% average discount rate, but this year retailers are making it easier to search online for deals and then buy from your desktop or phone.

Adobe reported 25.3% growth on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, compared with 17.7% in 2017. Thanksgiving Day sales online reached $3.7 billion or 27.9% YoY, compared with 18.3% YoY last year.

With the exception of the luggage, my daughter and I bought the reminder of our purchases online.

My search on Thursday began on Google and Bing to confirm the hours that the South Coast Plaza store would open. Then I researched the sheets I wanted, Hotel Collection brand 680 thread-count sheets specific to Macy’s, to ensure they were on sale. I ended up with the sheets and a Travelpro suitcase I plan to use in December when I go to Park City, Utah, for the Search Insider Summit.

I partially blame the impulse buy on my daughter. She walked in with me to purchase luggage. And she wasn’t the only one. Probably 90% of the consumers in that store on Thursday night had luggage on their shopping list.

Multicultural search campaigns would have done well to bring consumers into the store Thursday night. Typically, in-store shoppers range from Middle Eastern and Asian, to Hispanic and Caucasian, but on Thanksgiving Day night I would guess that 80% were Asian. They were not U.S. Asian citizens -- the majority seemed to be visiting from abroad, based on the currency they used to make purchases.