Gen Z Goes Big on Black Friday

At least one group of shoppers has been happily hitting the malls this holiday season, seemingly oblvious to inflation eating into their discretionary dollars, CNN Business reports. The group in question is Gen Z (those born from the mid-to-late 1990s through the early 2010s).

“One standout this Black Friday was the high turnout of Gen Z in stores,” NPD apparel industry analyst Kristen Classi-Zummo told CNN. “Younger consumers flooded the mall, treating Black Friday as a social event. They came early, they came with friends, and they came to shop.”

Mall operator PREIT, which owns 18 shopping centers mainly on the East Coast, seconded that view.

“Over Black Friday weekend, we saw shoppers of all ages but certainly saw a strong showing from a youthful crowd and some of our strongest anecdotal sales reports came from top Gen Z brands and fashion department stores,” PREIT CEO Joe Coradino told CNN Business.

The National Retail Federation estimates that more than 123 million people visited brick-and-mortar stores over the Black Friday and holiday weekend, up a strong 17 percent from 2021, while the number of online shoppers grew at a much slower 2 percent pace, to 130.2 million.

For the full CNN Business report, click here.