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“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” added $64 million to its domestic tally during the five-day time frame.
Disney’s latest animated feature “Strange World” failed to lure in moviegoers, generating just $18.6 million between Wednesday and Sunday and a dismal $11.9 million for the traditional three-day opening.
The dichotomous weekend comes as CEO Bob Iger returns to the helm of the company, promising to restructure Disney in a way that puts creativity at the forefront.

Geber86 | Getty Images

This year’s Thanksgiving box office was both feast and famine for Walt Disney.
While “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” added $64 million to its domestic tally during the five-day time frame, Disney’s latest animated feature “Strange World” failed to lure in moviegoers, generating just $18.6 million between Wednesday and Sunday and a dismal $11.9 million for the traditional three-day opening.

That is the worst three-day opening for a Disney animated feature since 2000’s “The Emperor’s New Groove,” which brought in just under $10 million during its debut, according to data from Comscore.
The dichotomous weekend comes as CEO Bob Iger returns to the helm of the company, promising to restructure Disney in a way that puts creativity at the forefront. Iger is expected to expand on these plans during a company town hall on Monday.
The week of Thanksgiving is typically a robust time at the box office. In the last decade, not counting 2020 and 2021, the five-day Thanksgiving spread — consisting of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving through Sunday — has resulted in more than $250 million in ticket sales each year. 
This year, the domestic Thanksgiving box office tallied around $121 million. “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” led the pack, with “Strange World” taking second place. All other films, including Sony’s “Devotion,” Disney and Searchlight’s “The Menu,” Warner Bros.’ “Black Adam” and Universal’s “The Fabelmans” tallied less than $10 million each.
Not in the mix is Netflix’s “Glass Onion.” The streamer declined to share box office receipts for the latest Rian Johnson film, although it is believed to have tallied between $13 million and $15 million during the five-day stretch.

While “Strange World” outperformed a number of other films this weekend, its muted opening raises concerns about Disney’s animation strategy and if Iger can right the ship.
Disney’s previous CEO Bob Chapek, who took over for Iger just as the pandemic was starting in early 2020, made a series of decisions that alienated the company’s creative leaders in the wake of movie theater closures.
To start, he reorganized the company to funnel creative decisions through a single executive, rather than with each studio, taking power away from the people who were responsible for Disney’s biggest blockbusters.
Chapek then opted to have a number of Pixar and Disney Animation films released directly on the company’s streaming service instead of in theaters. This was in part because, at the time, children weren’t vaccinated and families were avoiding theaters, but also to try and bolster Disney+’s library with new content.
These decisions have led to a lot of confusion for audiences when animated Disney films have been released theatrically. Either these moviegoers are unaware the film is being put into the market or they think it is coming to Disney’s streaming platform.
This happened when Disney released “Lightyear” in cinemas in June. While the two previous Toy Story franchise films each opened to more than $100 million domestically, “Lightyear” snared just $50 million in ticket sales during its debut.

Disney Animation’s “Strange World” follows the Clades, a family of explorers whose differences threaten to topple their latest — and by far — most crucial mission.

Compounding this strategic decision is the fact that family films have been sparse at the box office in the wake of the pandemic. This means there are fewer opportunities for studios to market film trailers to their designated audience in cinemas and must rely more heavily on television and digital ads.
“No question a slow overall marketplace and a lack of awareness building horsepower for ‘Strange World’ hurt its potential to follow in the tradition of the long line of Disney animated hits over this very important holiday weekend in theaters,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore.
The Thanksgiving box office crown has long been held by Disney and its animated features, with films like “Frozen II,” “Coco,” “Moana,” and “Ralph Breaks the Internet” leading the pack in the last decade.
Even “Encanto,” which was released during the Thanksgiving frame last year, managed to generate more than $27 million during its three-day opening and more than $40 million across the full five-day holiday weekend.
Perhaps, “Strange World” will follow a similar path as “Encanto” and gain more attention from families once it is added to Disney+.
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC. NBCUniversal distributed “The Fabelmans.”

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WHICH firms have emerged as the winners from the chaos of the past three years? Perhaps the most unusual period for business in a generation began in the spring of 2020, when lockdowns brought parts of production to a standstill. A deep but brief recession was followed by a frantic recovery. Then came inflation. A world economy already in the grip of a high-speed cycle is now experiencing the fastest increase in interest rates since the 1980s. Graham Secker of Morgan Stanley, a bank, argues that the policy response to covid-19 has shocked the economy out of secular stagnation—the slow-growth, low-inflation malaise preceding the pandemic—and marks a new era.It should be no surprise that the business environment has changed profoundly. To take stock of this we have examined which American industries and firms have performed best over the past three years, based on stockmarket performance. The headline is that market leadership has flipped dramatically. The digital hares have given ground to old-economy tortoises. Big tech is no longer running away with the race. Firms once derided as obsolete and sluggish suddenly look vital again.We have chosen January 1st 2020 as the starting date for our analysis. Since then, the S&P 500 index of leading American shares has risen by 25%. The best-performing industry sector is energy, followed by Information Technology (IT). Health care has done well, as might be expected during a public-health crisis: the second-best-performing company in the S&P 500 is Moderna, a leading vaccine-maker, whose share price is up by no less than 800%.Industrial companies have kept pace with the index, as have consumer staples. Firms that serve discretionary parts of consumer spending, hurt by inflation, have lagged behind. The worst-performing sectors are real estate, banks and communication services (see chart 1). And at the very bottom of the performance league are cruise-liner firms, such as Carnival, that have seen their debts soar and their shares drop like an anchor towards the ocean floor. Measuring performance by share prices has its flaws. It is hard to look at the roller-coaster stock price of Tesla (up by 556%) without being mindful of the influence of investor fads and shifts in risk appetite. But over time, business success is embedded in market prices. It also helps to understand how investors’ perceptions have shifted over time. To capture this we have split the period into three stages. The stay-at-home phase, the reopening phase, and now the inflationary stage.The signature investments of the pre-pandemic era of secular stagnation were asset-light companies: principally software firms, which benefit from network effects, but also branded-goods companies. Firms based on ideas and information were favoured over ones that relied on physical capital. The trade was to buy “bits” and sell “atoms”. The first part of the pandemic amplified these trends. The stay-at-home phase lasted until November 8th 2020, the day before the test results of the Pfizer vaccine were announced. The big winners were tech, consumer discretionary (Amazon rose by 79%) and communication services (Netflix was up by 59%). The losers were real estate, banks and energy. There is little mystery to this. Stuck indoors, people relied on software and deliveries. Offices were barely occupied; there was little driving or air travel (bad for oil firms). And banks were hit by lower interest rates and fears of defaults.In the next, reopening phase, leadership shifted. Energy was the big winner, followed by financials (buoyed by optimism and rising asset prices), tech and real estate. Inflation emerged as a theme, but at that stage was seen as a symptom of growth and not yet as a threat to it. In the third phase, which began at the turn of this year, the Federal Reserve has pivoted from being relaxed about inflation to being spooked by it. Expectations of interest-rate increases have risen and the stockmarket has slumped. All sectors except energy have been crushed. Among the worst hit have been the winners of the first phase: tech, consumer discretionary and communication services. The time-horizon of investors has shortened. The share prices of businesses whose earnings power is projected furthest into the future, notably tech, have been trashed. Atoms are now back in favour. Three long yearsIf you look over the entire three-year period the best-performing industries are energy and IT: respectively the archetypes of the “value” style of investing and its antithesis, “growth”. The sequencing of their performance has been in mirror image. Energy—particularly oil firms, such as ExxonMobil and Chevron—had a terrible 2020 followed by two bumper years. Oil has gained back more than it lost.Technology firms had two blowout years before a reckoning in 2022. But there is plenty of dispersion. Within the big-tech category of the very largest firms there are big gaps in performance: shares of Meta, the owner of Facebook, have lost almost half of their value even as Apple’s shares have soared (see chart 2). The share price of Nvidia, a chip designer, is up by 177%, even as those of Intel, a chip pioneer from an earlier age, slumped.Which of the trends of the past three years will persist and which will prove more transitory? Tech is running into structural problems. The firms that grew rapidly in the 2010s, such as Amazon and Netflix, are now maturing businesses. The tech giants compete more vigorously with each other. Now that they are so big, if demand in their particular market is dented, they cannot avoid the pain. The original attraction was that tech firms were capital-light. Once a digital platform is set up, adding more customers does not add much to costs as it would for a traditional firm. “Amazon got to 5% of US retail sales much faster, and using much less capital, than it took Walmart to get to 5% of US retail sales,” says Robert Buckland of Citigroup, a bank. Yet it has become more apparent that big tech relies on atoms as well as bits. Mr Buckland notes that Amazon’s capital budget next year is more than twice as large as ExxonMobil’s. Meta has already spent a small fortune on establishing a virtual-reality platform, of which investors have taken a dim view. Netflix’s margins have been squeezed by the higher spending on content. It follows that the ability to marshal capital and use it efficiently is likely to become a key differentiation for performance in the new era of higher rates. Oil companies used to be notorious for blowing profits on exploration. But pressure from shareholders to improve returns on capital invested and the stigma associated with new investment in fossil fuels has raised the bar for deploying capital. These days it is big tech that blows cashflows on capital spending. Whether mature tech companies can find more discipline will determine whether they can perform better. More broadly, the increased cost of funding will give a lift to established firms across the economy. When capital is abundant, almost any venture can get funding. Tesla’s boss, Elon Musk, exploited the period of bountiful capital and investor patience to build an electric-vehicle powerhouse that poses a mortal threat to General Motors and Ford. Now that capital is much scarcer, a would-be Tesla would not get such generous backing, tilting the scales towards companies that can generate cash from legacy investments. Incumbents can feel less threatened by potential disruptors. The upshot of all of this is the hare that is technology, while by no means lame, is not as pacy as it had once seemed. Meanwhile the old-economy tortoises have emerged from their shells with a surprising spring in their step. Still, the strangest business cycle in living memory is not over yet. Expect more surprises. ■To stay on top of the biggest stories in business and technology, sign up to the Bottom Line, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter. More

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Domino’s is buying 800 Chevy Bolt electric vehicles for delivery use at stores across the U.S. as the pizza restaurant franchise looks to make its fleet more climate friendly.
This is not the first effort by Domino’s to advance delivery, with recent tests of autonomous vehicles and an e-bike program.
The new EV fleet will also help boost driver recruitment, one of the areas of hiring the company has seen lag in recent quarters.

Domino’s will roll out 800 custom-branded 2023 Chevy Bolt electric vehicles at locations across the U.S. in the coming months.

Domino’s Pizza will be rolling out a fleet of 2023 Chevy Bolt electric vehicles, 800 of the GM EVs in total across the U.S. in the coming months, as it looks to not only reduce its environmental impact but also attract new delivery drivers.
The pizza chain restaurant has previously set a goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, and CEO Russell Weiner said optimizing how it delivers pizza is key.

“Domino’s was founded in 1960 as a delivery company, and we go to bed every night and wake up every morning saying ‘how can we get better?'” Weiner told CNBC’s Jim Cramer on “Mad Money” last week. “This is a way we can get better; better service for our customers and better for the environment.”
The Chevy Bolt EV will provide the company with zero tailpipe emissions and lower average maintenance costs than nonelectric vehicles, as well as a reduction in fueling costs, according to Domino’s. The new vehicles, which have a 259-mile range, will be custom-branded with Domino’s logos.
An initial 100 vehicles have been arriving at select franchise and corporate stores across the U.S. in November, with the additional 700 arriving over the coming months. Domino’s had 6,643 stores across the U.S. as of Sept. 11, with 402 of those being corporate locations.
The adoption of this fleet of EVs is not the first time Domino’s has looked to optimize how pizza is delivered.
In 2014, the company introduced the DXP delivery vehicle, a custom-build Chevrolet Spark that featured a built-in warming oven and special compartments to hold items like sodas.

Domino’s has also been piloting driverless delivery with robotics company Nuro, delivering pizzas with an autonomous on-road vehicle at the chain’s Woodland Heights location in Houston, Texas. Other start-ups, such as Refraction AI, have been testing autonomous vehicles suited for pizza delivery.
Domino’s has also looked to move beyond traditional car delivery, launching an e-bike delivery program in 2019 at stores in major metropolitan cities like Baltimore and Miami. It now delivers pizza by electric bike and scooter in 24 international markets.

EVs help finding new workers

Rolling out the new fleet of GM EVs also is expected to help the company with its driver recruitment efforts.
“It just allows us to tap into a different driver pool,” Weiner said. “If you think about today, what we do is hire folks with cars, but that’s getting really competitive with what’s going on.”
There are many people who work in Domino’s stores or potential workers who have driver’s licenses, and Weiner said, “all they need is a car… it’s a great way for us to bring in incremental labor at a time when that market is tight.”
While some of the company’s stores require delivery driver applicants to use their own vehicle, some do provide a car.
Weiner said that the company’s hiring metrics including applications and new hires per week are back to pre-Covid numbers, but he added, “there’s still gaps to fill, and that’s part of why we’re doing things like this to bring the inflow and give a few more options.”
On the company’s third quarter earnings call with analysts on Oct. 13, Weiner said staffing remains a constraint, “but my confidence in our ability to solve many of our delivery labor challenges ourselves has grown over the past few quarters.” More

Consumers spent a record $9.12 billion online shopping during Black Friday this year, according to Adobe.
Overall online sales for Black Friday were up 2.3% year-over-year.
Buy Now Pay Later payments increased by 78% compared with the past week, beginning Nov. 19, as consumers continue to grapple with high prices and inflation.

Black Friday shoppers wait to enter the Coach store at the Opry Mills Mall in Nashville, Tennessee, on November 25, 2022.
Seth Herald | AFP | Getty Images

Consumers spent a record $9.12 billion online shopping during Black Friday this year, according to Adobe, which tracks sales on retailers’ websites.
Overall online sales for the day after Thanksgiving were up 2.3% year over year, and electronics were a major contributor, as online sales surged 221% over an average day in October, Adobe said. Toys were another popular category for shoppers, up 285%, as was exercise equipment, up 218%.

Many consumers embraced flexible payment plans on Black Friday as they continue to grapple with high prices and inflation. Buy Now Pay Later payments increased by 78% compared with the past week, beginning Nov. 19, and Buy Now Pay Later revenue is up 81% for the same period.
Some of this year’s hottest items included gaming consoles, drones, Apple MacBooks, Dyson products and toys like Fortnite, Roblox, Bluey, Funko Pop! and Disney Encanto, according to the report.
Black Friday shoppers also broke a record for mobile orders, as 48% of online sales were made on smartphones, an increase from 44% last year.
The record-breaking spending comes on the heels of a strong day of Thanksgiving shopping, in which consumers shelled out an all-time high of $5.29 billion online, up 2.9% year-over-year. Typically, shoppers spend about $2 billion to $3 billion online in a day, according to Adobe. 
For retailers, these numbers may be a promising indicator of the coming weeks. Early holiday forecasts have been muted, and Target, Macy’s, Nordstrom and other retailers reported a lull in sales in late October and early November. Consumer sentiment has also weakened in the past month as inflation hovers near four-decade highs.

Though Black Friday is over, e-commerce activity will remain strong through the weekend, according to Adobe’s report. Adobe expects consumers to spend $4.52 billion on Saturday and $4.99 billion on Sunday, ahead of the year’s biggest online shopping day, Cyber Monday.
This year, Cyber Monday is expected to drive $11.2 billion in spending, up 5.1% year-over-year, according to Adobe.

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Cyber Report

Fitness trackers and apps from companies including Google, Apple, Garmin and Strava offer a convenient way to stay on top of health and wellness, monitoring body metrics like sleep quality and heart rate.
But even the biggest brands focused on security and reputation can be hacked or share personal data in other unintended ways with serious, sometimes devastating, consequences.
Data collected by a fitness app is not protected like health information under the law, making social and location settings, and login credentials, critical for a user to set properly before making these devices part of their daily life.

A woman uses her smartwatch while sitting in the gym.
Artem Varnitsin / Eyeem | Getty Images

Fitness trackers, which help keep tabs on sleep quality, heart rate and other biological metrics, are a popular way to help Americans improve their health and well-being. 
There are many types of trackers on the market, including those from well-known brands such as Apple, Fitbit, Garmin and Oura. While these devices are growing in popularity — and have legitimate uses — consumers don’t always understand the extent to which their information could be available to or intercepted by third parties. This is especially important because people can’t simply change their DNA sequencing or heart rhythms as they could a credit card or bank account number. 

“Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, you can’t get it back,” said Steve Grobman, senior vice president and chief technology officer of computer security company McAfee.
The holiday season is a popular time to purchase consumer health devices. Here’s what you should know about the security risks tied to fitness trackers and personal health data.
Stick to a name brand, even though they are hacked
Fitness devices can be expensive, even without taking inflation into account, but don’t be tempted to skimp on security to save a few dollars. While a less-known company may offer more bells and whistles at a better price, a well-established provider that is breached is more likely to care about its reputation and do things to help consumers, said Kevin Roundy, senior technical director at cybersecurity company Gen Digital.
To be sure, data compromise issues, from criminal hacks to unintended sharing of sensitive user information, can — and have — hit well-known players, including Fitbit, which Google bought in 2021, and Strava. But even so, security professionals say it’s better to buy from a reputable manufacturer that knows how to design secure devices and has a reputation to upkeep. 
“A smaller company might just go bankrupt,” Roundy said. 

Fitness app data is not protected like health information
There can be other concerns beyond having a person’s sensitive information exposed in a data breach. For example, fitness trackers generally connect to a user’s phone via Bluetooth, leaving personal data susceptible to hacking.  
What’s more, the information that fitness trackers collect isn’t considered “health information” under the federal HIPAA standard or state laws like California’s Confidentiality of Medical Information Act. This means that personally revealing data can potentially be used in ways a consumer might never expect. For instance, the personal information could be shared with or sold to third parties such as data brokers or law enforcement, said Emory Roane, policy counsel at Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a consumer privacy, advocacy and education organization. 
Some fitness trackers may use consumers’ health and wellness data to derive revenue from ads, so if that’s a concern, you’ll want to make sure there’s a way to opt out. Review the provider’s terms of service to understand the its policies before you buy the fitness tracker, Roundy said.
Default social, location settings may need to be changed
A fitness tracker’s default settings may not offer the most stringent security controls. To boost protection, look at what settings can be adjusted, such as those related to social networking, location and other sharable information, said Dan Demeter, security researcher at cybersecurity provider Kaspersky Lab.
Depending on the state, consumers can also opt out of the sale or sharing of their personal information to third parties, and in some cases, these rights are being expanded, according to Roane.
Certainly, device users should be careful about what they post publicly about their location and activities, or what they allow to become public by default. This data could be searchable online and used by bad actors. Even if they aren’t acting maliciously, third parties such as insurers and employers could get access to this type of public information.
“Users expect their data to be their data and use it how they want it to be used,” Roane said, but that’s not necessarily the case. 
“It’s not only about present data, but also about past data,” Demeter said. For instance, a bad actor could see all the times the person goes running — what days and hours — and where, and use it to their advantage. 
There are also a number of digital scams where criminals can use information about your location to make an opportunity seem more plausible. They can claim things like, “I know you lost your wallet at so and so place, which lends credibility to the scammer’s story,” Grobman said. 
Location data can prove problematic in other ways as well. Roane offers the example of a women seeking reproductive health care in a state where abortion is illegal. A fitness tracker with geolocation services enabled could collect information that could be subpoenaed by law enforcement or be purchased by data brokers and sold to law enforcement, he said.
Use strong password, two-factor authentication, and never share credentials
Be sure to secure your account by using a strong password that you don’t use with another account and enabling two-factor authentication for the associated app. And don’t share credentials. That’s never a good idea, but it can have especially devastating consequences in certain circumstances. For example, a domestic violence victim could be tracked by her abuser, assuming he had access to her account credentials, Roane said.
Also be sure to keep the device and the app up-to-date with security fixes.
While nothing is full-proof, the goal is to be as secure as possible. “If somebody tries to profit from our personal information, we just make their lives harder so it’s not that easy to hack us,” Demeter said. More

Online sales for Black Friday are expected to top $9 billion, a record for the industry, Adobe said.
Mobile shopping also hit a record high this year.
Shoppers bought Apple products, espresso machines and gaming consoles, as well as toys from Funko, Hatchimals and Squishmallows.

A Black Friday sale sign in the clothing department of the Macy’s flagship store on Black Friday in New York, US, on Friday, Nov. 25, 2022.
Jeenah Moon | Bloomberg | Getty Images

This will likely end up the biggest Black Friday ever online.
Overall online sales for the day after Thanksgiving are expected to top $9 billion, according to Adobe, which tracks sales on retailers’ websites. That would be a record.

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Through 6 p.m. ET, shoppers spent $7.28 billion at websites. That number could balloon to as much as $9.2 billion before the day is done, Adobe said.
The record-breaking spending comes on the heels of a strong day of Thanksgiving shopping, in which consumers shelled out an all-time high $5.29 billion online, up 2.9% year-over-year. Typically, shoppers spend about $2 billion to $3 billion online in a day, according to Adobe. 
The company said shoppers were picking up Apple products such as watches and AirPods, smart speakers and televisions, espresso machines, and gaming consoles, as well as toys from Funko, Hatchimals and Squishmallows.
Adobe noted that mobile shopping also hit a record high this year, with sales from smartphones accounting for 55% of online sales on Thanksgiving Day. These sales are expected to account for 53% of total Black Friday sales, the company predicts.
Additionally, strong discounts enticed inflation-weary consumers to put more items in their carts. The average order volume was up 12% during the season. Toys, in particular, drove significant demand, with deals as high as 33% off.

For retailers, these numbers may be a promising indicator about the weeks ahead. Early holiday forecasts have been muted. Target, Macy’s, Nordstrom and other companies reported a lull in sales in late October and early November. Consumer sentiment has weakened in the past month as inflation hovers near four-decade highs.
That has ratcheted up the pressure for retailers on Black Friday weekend — a time that’s often associated with the biggest deals of the holiday shopping season.
Adobe expects Cyber Week, the five days from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday, will generate around $34.8 billion in online spending, up nearly 3% compared to 2021. Cyber Monday is expected to be the biggest online shopping day, with sales slated to top $11.2 billion, the company forecast.
— CNBC’s Melissa Repko contributed to this report.

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Andre Bing, accused of killing six co-workers at a Virginia Walmart, bought a pistol the morning of the attack, officials said.
Officials also said Bing left behind a “death note,” that gave a glimpse into his potential motive.

A police tape is seen at the site of a fatal shooting in a Walmart on November 23, 2022 in Chesapeake, Virginia.
Nathan Howard | Getty Images

The Walmart night crew supervisor who shot and killed six his co-workers Tuesday used a handgun he purchased the morning of the attack and left a “death note,” according to details released Friday by Chesapeake, Virginia, officials.
The new details indicate 31-year-old Andre Bing used a 9-millimeter pistol which he legally purchased from a local store the same day as the shooting.

Officers said they found ammunition, a receipt and paperwork related to the gun purchase at Bing’s residence.
Police responded to the shooting shortly after 10 p.m. ET on Tuesday, minutes after the attack was reported, and mere days before Thanksgiving and the kickoff of the holiday shopping season. A 16-year-old boy was among the victims, officials said. The victims were honored in a vigil Thursday night.
Bing, who officials said had no criminal history, died at the scene from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The note recovered on Bing’s cellphone revealed complaints the mass shooter had about his co-workers and provided a glimpse into his potential motive for the deadly shooting.
In the note, which included references to God and the Holy Spirit, Bing described alleged harassment by his co-workers. His former colleagues, according to The New York Times, had described him as “weird” and said he would sometimes demonstrate a “nasty attitude.”

“There is nothing that can justify taking innocent lives,” Walmart said in a statement. “Our focus continues to be on the families who are grieving and supporting our associates through this difficult time.”
Officials added that two victims are being treated in area hospitals. One remains in critical condition, while the other was improving.
If you are having suicidal thoughts or are in distress, contact the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 for support and assistance from a trained counselor.

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Walmart took the top spot among shoppers who are searching online for Black Friday discounts, according to data from Captify.
Amazon last year topped the ad tech company’s list, but this year fell to fourth place as of Friday morning.
Retailers are battling for shoppers’ eyeballs and wallets amid an unusual holiday shopping season clouded with sky-high inflation.

Walmart is top of mind for holiday shoppers who are hunting for Black Friday deals, according to new research.
The big box retailer is dominating online searches for Black Friday discounts as of Friday morning, according to advertising technology company Captify, which tracks more than 1 billion searches a day from websites globally.

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Searches for Black Friday discounts on Walmart surged 386% year over year, leapfrogging rival retailer Amazon, which last year ranked first in Captify’s survey of most searched retailers on Black Friday. This year, the world’s largest e-commerce company ranked fourth, behind Target and Kohl’s, respectively.
Retailers are battling for shoppers’ eyeballs and wallets at a time when the holiday shopping season is expected to be more subdued than in years past. Americans are expected to pull back on their holiday shopping this year as sky-high inflation squeezes their spending power.
The National Retail Federation said it expects holiday sales during November and December to rise between 6% and 8% from last year, a decline when factoring in the effect of inflation. Online sales during the months of November and December are forecast to grow a meager 2.5% to $209.7 billion, compared with an 8.6% increase a year ago, according to Adobe Analytics.
Early signs show the season may not be as gloomy as predicted. Online sales climbed 2.9% year over year to $5.29 billion on Thanksgiving Day, Adobe Analytics said. That’s slightly higher than its estimates for growth during the overall holiday season.
Black Friday is expected to pull in $9 billion in online sales, a 1% jump from the previous year, according to Adobe.
Shopify merchants saw a solid start to the holiday period. Businesses who host their online stores on Shopify were raking in $1.52 million per minute on Thanksgiving Day, according to the company.

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