More people are expected to shop on this year's Black Friday, according to a survey for the National Retail Federation conducted by BIGresearch.

Black Friday is said to be the biggest shopping day of the year and unofficial kick-off of the holiday spending season. Some 152 million shoppers are expected to hit stores on Nov. 25, the day after U.S. Thanksgiving. This is a 10.1 percent rise from 138 million people last year.

The NRF previously forecast that retail sales would rise 2.8 percent to $465.6 billion for the November-December period. It has been reported that retail chains, including Target Corp, Macy's Inc and Best Buy Co, have announced plans to open on Thanksgiving to capture holiday sales.

The survey has also shown that there is a large section of customers who will be using the Internet for shopping this time. 17.3 percent of people will look for Black Friday deals on retailers' Facebook page and 11.3 percent on group buying sites such as Groupon Inc and Living Social.

Though many retailers are already touting select Black Friday ads, there's no doubt we'll all be blown away by what retailers still have in their bag of tricks for shoppers, said NRF president and CEO Matthew Shay.

We fully expect to see excited shoppers as early as midnight at stores around the country, as many holiday shoppers would rather stay up all night to take advantage of retailers' Black Friday deals rather than set their alarm to wake up the next morning, he said.

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