Black Friday shoppers haven’t returned to Philly malls. Will this year be different?

Every year after Thanksgiving dinner, Nicole Carson, her mother, and her aunts would open the newspaper — the thick one with all the Black Friday circulars — and scout what stores they wanted to hit and in which order. They’d set their alarms for 4 a.m., excited for a day of scoring steep discounts.

The Black Friday preparation was as much of a Thanksgiving tradition as turkey and football, but over the years, things have changed.

“With modern technology, it doesn’t make sense to do that anymore,” said Carson, a 44-year-old financial adviser who lives in Plymouth Meeting. “All these deals are online now.”

As more consumers like Carson have opted to shop from home, malls and retail outlets across the Philadelphia region have seen smaller crowds on what has historically been retail’s busiest day of the year.

Last Black Friday, foot traffic at nine area shopping destinations remained lower — and in some cases far lower — than it was in 2019, according to Placer.ai, which uses cell phone data to analyze foot traffic. This trend was seen everywhere from the massive King of Prussia Mall, where traffic was down nearly 10% from 2019 levels, to South Jersey’s Gloucester Premium Outlets and Bucks County’s Oxford Valley Mall.

The one exception: Cherry Hill Mall, which had slightly more in-person shoppers last year compared to 2019.

City malls — the Shops at Liberty Place, Philadelphia Mills, and the Fashion District Philadelphia, which opened in fall 2019 — have been slower to rebound than their suburban counterparts. At Center City’s Shops at Liberty Place, for instance, there were nearly 63% fewer shoppers there last Black Friday than in 2019, according to the data.

Mall executives pointed out that the day after Thanksgiving has become slightly less important to their holiday performance because Black Friday promotions and other early-holiday deals now start days if not weeks before Thanksgiving.

“Traffic counts like Placer.ai don’t capture the full story,” Fashion District Philadelphia general manager Ryan Williams said in a statement. “People still want that in-person experience, to shop together, take in the sights and sounds of the season, and go home with the confidence of the gift in hand.”

Crystal Fresco, a regional vice president of marketing for Simon Property Group, echoed that sentiment, saying that foot traffic at Simon’s Philadelphia-area locations has been consistently higher in 2023 than in previous years. Simon owns the King of Prussia Mall, Philadelphia Mills, Oxford Valley Mall, Philadelphia Premium Outlets, and Gloucester Premium Outlets.

And despite data showing drooping interest at several of PREIT’s malls, Black Friday still remains the busiest day of the year, said Joe Coradino, CEO of PREIT, which owns Cherry Hill Mall, Willow Grove Park, and Springfield Mall.

“Our data shows that the traffic pattern has shifted a bit to be more steady throughout the day whereas it historically had been an early-morning push for doorbuster deals,” Coradino said in a statement. And some shoppers now take a hybrid approach to Black Friday, reserving discounted items online for pickup at the mall.

But still, “the allure of the Black Friday frenzy, as we traditionally thought about it, is fading,” said Jillian Hmurovic, an assistant professor of marketing at Drexel University’s Lebow College of Business. “The online aspect just changed the game.”

In 2019, Black Friday superseded Cyber Monday as the biggest online shopping day of the year for the first time since online retail’s version of Black Friday was officially coined in 2005. About 93 million people nationwide shopped online on Black Friday 2019, according to the National Retail Federation, while 84 million shopped in-store on the same day.

Online shoppers have outnumbered in-person shoppers on Black Friday every year since.

“I love it,” said Dave Courtney, 34, a facilities manager who lives in Brewerytown. “Once I started shopping online, I couldn’t imagine going to a store to get that stuff.”

“It’s just more convenient to order online,” said Amanda Gannon, 45, a medical receptionist who lives in Drexel Hill.

Consumers are also increasingly skeptical about whether they’re actually getting retailers’ best deals on Black Friday, Hmurovic said, making the bar especially high for which deals are worth sacrificing time standing in a physical line.

In recent years, “I don’t think the deals are as amazing,” said Brittany Bronson, who used to love the Black Friday rush.

A decade ago, she’d leave Thanksgiving dinner by 8 p.m. to sit outside Best Buy and wait hours in the cold to score the best deal on a TV or other big-ticket item. She’d go home, sleep for a few hours, then head out to a mall for more bargain hunting.

When she gave birth to her twins six years ago, Bronson, 33, of Roxborough, swapped standing in long lines in parking lots for scrolling websites on the couch.

With so many online sales throughout the year, “I don’t really need to wait until Black Friday to get a new TV,” said Bronson, who works as a college professor and a diversity, equity, and inclusion specialist.

Still, mall executives are hopeful more consumers will take part in the Black Friday tradition this year.

And there are a few promising signs: Several national analysts are projecting overall holiday spending will return to pre-pandemic levels for the first time. Philadelphians expect to spend $1,842 on average on gifts, decor, and other experiences, more than the national average. Deloitte’s Black Friday-Cyber Monday survey, released last Monday, found that more than half of respondents wanted to avoid Black Friday crowds, but both online and in-person shoppers expect to spend more this year than last year.

The diehard in-person shoppers are still out there, too — and they can’t imagine post-Thanksgiving shopping any other way.

“Oh my god, the tradition, the energy, trying to be the first one in line,” said Mary Miles, 56, of Upper Darby, who has shopped in-person on Black Friday for more than two decades (including one year she ventured out in the rain on crutches after two knee surgeries). “It has changed, but I just love the rush of it.”