It’s Thanksgiving week – and with it, the real holiday rush is on. We’re releasing this week some new research about consumer and retailer plans for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, so herewith a few highlights:

Black Friday. The day after Thanksgiving, traditionally a day more focused on offline shopping, is getting a boost from online vehicles this year. 

• Last year, consumers told us that, second only to newspapers, they specifically relied most heavily on merchant Web sites and emails for Black Friday specials and information. 
• The good news:  most of the fifty retailers surveyed who operate brick and mortar stores told us that they’ll be leveraging everything from their house email lists to their Web site home page and even search marketing to promote Black Friday offers and other information for their offline stores.  In fact, over one third of these retailers also told us that, compared with last year, they’re actually increasing their use of these online channels this year. 
• What about the naysayers? Whereas 14%  of retailers aren’t going to leverage online vehicles for Black Friday this year, that’s down from over one quarter last year. 

For more information about how consumers are planning for Black Friday this year, please see also the NRF press release on the subject. 

Cyber Monday. The first Monday after Thanksgiving is a holiday shopping focus for both retailers and consumers. (As many of you know, the term Cyber Monday was coined by Shop.org a number of years ago.) 

• Half of retailers surveyed this year will conduct a special email campaign for the day, almost as many will offer specific deals or promotions, and one third are planning a one day sale – all increases from last year. 
• Next week we’ll conduct our post-Thanksgiving survey of consumers and will ask them then about their awareness of Cyber Monday. What bodes well for this year is that we found last year that awareness of Cyber Monday leapt to three-quarters of consumers, up from half in 2007. 

If you haven’t already done so, please do check out the Cyber Monday information on our site, and don’t miss the Cyber Monday specials listed on our home page and on CyberMonday.com itself.  Let us know what you think. 

In the meantime, wishing you a happy Thanksgiving – and strong results for Thanksgiving weekend and Cyber Monday!