Macy’s CEO: Customers use technology to enhance in-store shopping experience

(CNBC.COM): Black Friday shoppers are increasingly using technology not just to shop online, but to improve their brick-and-mortar experience in the store as well, Terry Lundgren, chairman and CEO of Macy’s, told CNBC on Friday.

Rather than purchasing items online, Lundgren said consumers will instead check a given store’s inventory on their smartphones and find what they want to buy before heading to the store.

“That combination of using technology and the experience of being inside the store is the way the consumers are shopping today and [it] will continue to be so in the future,” Lundgren told “Squawk Box.”

So what are consumers buying? Lundgren said the retailer’s dress business is very strong, especially dresses for social occasions as opposed to daytime styles. In particular, American designer Tommy Hilfiger’s men’s, women’s, and kids collections are “on fire,” according to the CEO.

And shoppers are purchasing a variety of products, from $15 gift sets of perfume samples to high-end technology like the Apple Watch.

“It’s really, for us, not just lower price. It’s really the range. And that’s what I think a store like Macy’s has to offer the best, and that is the wide range, wide selection of various products and various price points,” Lundgren said.

Macy’s opened for Black Friday at 5 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day, welcoming around 16,000 shoppers to its flagship store in New York City’s Herald Square.