A less frenzied Black Friday as millennials opt to stay in

If you’re in the retail business in the United States, you probably really care about these two things: millennials and Black Friday.

But more and more, these two big drivers of the industry don’t mix inside stores — a dynamic that is reshaping one the country’s biggest shopping days.

Young people of all kinds, a coveted group for retailers because of their free-spending ways, are increasingly turning to their computers and phones to do their holiday shopping, spreading out more widely the days they open their wallets. Crowds on Friday, the unofficial kickoff of the holiday shopping season, will tilt older than a few years ago, and also, it appears, more cautious with their money.

As a result, the mix of retailers with high expectations for the day is changing quickly, skewing more toward dollar stores and discount retailers and toward essential products like food and cookware. And it is also making the day itself less and less important for the industry overall.

“As big as the event or the weekend has become, it’s substantially muted for the fact that all of the people are buying online,” said Mark A. Cohen, director of retail studies at Columbia Business School.

A decade ago, the day after Thanksgiving accounted for 6 percent of all shopping for the holiday season, according to Craig Johnson, the president of Customer Growth Partners, a research firm. This year, he expects shoppers to spend $27 billion on Black Friday, but that will account for only 4.3 percent of the spending this season.

Overall, people are expected to spend $632 billion this holiday season, up from $607 billion last year, the company estimates. But for the first time, more than half that growth will come from online shopping, Johnson said.

At the same time, there is a distinct division in who is shopping online. More than half of baby boomers surveyed said they would do none of their holiday shopping online, according to a study by CivicScience, a market research company. Nearly 40 percent of those age 18-34 — the group known as millennials — will do most or all of their shopping on the web, and another 35 percent said they would shop both online and in-store.

That shift to online shopping has put more pressure on stores to offer deals good enough to bring people out into the cold. Less than a quarter of Americans plan to shop in stores Black Friday, down from 28 percent two years ago, according to a survey by Bankrate.com, a website that tracks savings products.

Televisions, headphones and electronics, as always, are expected to be a big draw at big-box stores like Wal-Mart and Target. Department stores that offer big discounts, like Macy’s, will remain a top destination during the weekend, too. Macy’s website is blanketed with its Black Friday promotions, with ads for everything from coats to Apple watches to blenders. “Black Friday Starts Now!” declares a big banner at the top.

But discount and dollar stores, which generally haven’t been big draws on Black Friday, are also expecting strong sales. Overall, dollar stores