Southwestern Ohio shoppers and their counterparts throughout the country flocked to malls and department stores during the four-day Thanksgiving weekend — and they were in a spending mood, according to local mall managers and the National Retail Federation.

Total retail spending nationwide during the four-day weekend totaled $59.1 billion, up 12.8 percent from 2011, according to a survey released Sunday night by the National Retail Federation. A record 247 million shoppers visited stores and websites during the four-day weekend starting on Thanksgiving, up 9.2 percent from last year, and the average holiday shopper spent $423 throughout the entire weekend, up from $398 last year, NRF officials said.

Trisha Hale, general manager of the Towne Mall in Middletown, said customers lined up to await a Sears store opening at 8 p.m. Thursday, and other stores in her retail center reported larger crowds and stronger sales this year compared to 2011.

At the Cincinnati Premium Outlets in Monroe, “We were pleased with Black Friday and the weekend in total,” said Lewis Taulbee, the outlet center’s general manager. “Throughout the weekend traffic was strong … . We’re looking to forward to the weeks to come and the fact that we have extra days this year for holiday shopping.”

Savvy shoppers still appeared to have plenty of appetite for one-day-only deals that retailers lined up for Cyber Monday, when 129.2 million shoppers said they would head to retailers’ websites, according to a survey conducted for Shop.org. That was up from 122.8 million who shopped online for Cyber Monday deals last year and from the 106.9 million who shopped on Cyber Monday in 2010. The NRF said 85 percent of retailers offered some type of special promotion for Cyber Monday.

Whether sales occurred at bricks-and-mortar stores or online, the robust start to the holiday shopping season is a big boost for retailers, which can make up to 40 percent of their annual revenue in November and December. And it’s also good news for manufacturers that will be called upon to replace the items sold last weekend, and for state and local governments that collect sales taxes on the transactions.

Gordon Gough, executive vice president of the Ohio Council of Retail Merchants, said retailers are optimistic that the strong start for holiday sales will continue, in part because unemployment rates are dropping, and because consumers have been paying down their debt in recent years. “That has freed up some discretionary spending dollars for Ohio consumers,” Gough said.

The University of Cincinnati Economics Center projects a 4.2 percent increase in retail spending in November and December in Ohio.