Holiday shopping isn't what it used to be.

A National Retail Federation survey on Sunday found that more people shopped online than in stores during the Thanksgiving and Black Friday weekend, a sign of how quickly and deeply American shopping habits have changed.

This year, crowds at malls were thinner and stores were calmer over the Black Friday weekend. But online shopping, especially on mobile phones, surged as more retailers offered the same promotions online, often before items became available in stores and shoppers relished the joy of grabbing a deal while lounging at home.

Consumers spent an estimated $4.45 billion online Thursday and Friday, with Black Friday sales rising 14% from a year ago, according to Adobe Systems Inc., which tracks purchases across 4,500 U.S. sites. It estimated that more than half of Black Friday shopping came from mobile devices. At Wal-Mart Stores Inc. about half of online orders since Thanksgiving have been placed on mobile devices, almost double the amount last year, according to the retail chain.

At the same time, the Thanksgiving shopping ritual appears to be losing steam overall, blending into a longer holiday season that starts before Halloween and extends up until the hours before Christmas for some shoppers. Americans spent an estimated $12.1 billion at traditional stores over Thanksgiving and Black Friday, a decline from last year, according to ShopperTrak, which uses cameras to measure shopping.

"We are done Christmas shopping. We bought online," said Albert Calderon, a police officer pushing his two-year-old granddaughter in a cart through a Wal-Mart store in Maryland on Friday. "Today we are shopping for fun," said his wife, Susan. The couple saw the relatively empty Wal-Mart parking lot and decided to go in, Mr. Calderon said.

The shifting landscape means retailers that rely mostly on selling from physical stores face fundamental changes with how holiday shopping will play out in the coming weeks and future years, say retail executives and consultants.

Big chains are trying to adjust. For the first time, Wal-Mart put the majority of its door-buster deals online, hours before offering them in stores, and Target Corp. had employees shipping online orders from stores before doors opened on Thanksgiving. But despite heavy investments, online sales are still a small portion of sales for these retail chains. On Sunday, the retail federation estimated that more than 103 million people shopped online over the Thanksgiving weekend and nearly 102 million shopped in stores, based on its survey of 4,200 shoppers.

"It is clear that the age-old holiday tradition of heading out to stores with family and friends is now equally matched in the new tradition of looking online for holiday savings opportunities," said NRF President Matthew Shay.

The NRF changed its methodology, so this year's survey isn't comparable with last year, which showed a sharp decline in shoppers during the Black Friday weekend. To be sure, the early Black Friday estimates sometimes don't reflect actual dollar sales data compiled later in the season, especially as more shoppers spend before or after the Thanksgiving week.

"We've seen a trend in recent years toward an extended holiday," stretching from Thanksgiving to as late as mid-December, said Hal Lawton, eBay's senior vice president of North America. "We're very pleased by the early results we've seen" for the season.

This year Half Price Books, a chain of about 125 book stores, opened its doors at 9 a.m. on Black Friday, receding from a 7 a.m. open last year that raised labor costs, but failed to boost sales, said Kathy Doyle Thomas, chief strategy officer at the chain. "We probably won't open early ever again because it isn't worth it to us," she said.

According to data from International Business Machines Corp., mobile devices accounted for about 57% of all online shopping traffic, up 15% since the same period last year, and the first time mobile traffic has exceeded desktop traffic on Black Friday.

"This holiday may be a wake-up call for store-based retailers to recognize they are going to have to transform their store models to compete with online retailers," said Steve Barr, retail consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Julia Miller said she tries to get all of her holiday shopping done by Black Friday. The software developer from Niskayuna, N.Y., does most of her shopping online but visited the Crossgates Mall in Albany on Friday with her daughter Erin to shop at Victoria's Secret and Hollister. "Clothes, clothes I like to touch," she said. After Thanksgiving weekend, prices traditionally stabilize, then drop again about a week before Christmas, said Bryan Gildenberg, retail analyst at Kantar Worldwide, a research and consulting firm. But this year "I think we will see extended Black Friday deals and retailers pulling forward their pre-Christmas deals," he said.

The shift online and away from Black Friday makes it more complex for brick-and-mortar retailers to pinpoint what type of discounts will draw shoppers, say retail consultants.

And it isn't just retailers making a play for holiday dollars. Expedia Inc. and other online travel agents are offering more Black Friday and so called Cyber Monday deals, travel discounts offered in limited quantities for a short amount of time. "Ultimately retailers are in a race to capture their share of consumer spending," said PwC's Mr. Barr.

Greg Bensinger and Sara Germano contributed to this article.

Write to Sarah Nassauer at sarah.nassauer@wsj.com

 

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 30, 2015 09:55 ET (14:55 GMT)

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