Aggressive price-cutting by retailers over the Thanksgiving holiday brought economically battered shoppers into stores in droves, according to spending estimates for the weekend that marks the symbolic start of the US shopping season.

The National Retail Federation, which represents leading stores, estimated that the average US shopper spent $372.57, or 7.2 per cent more than last year, over the four days from Thanksgiving Thursday to Sunday. A survey for the federation by BIG Research also estimated that the number of shoppers visiting stores and online e-commerce sites rose more than 15 per cent to 172m.