Retailers across the US offered early Black Friday discounts to lure bargain-hunters on US Thanksgiving eve, but initial checks showed crowds in brick-and-mortar stores were subdued even as online sales jumped.
“It’s still early, and from what we are seeing so far the crowds are good but not great,” Customer Growth Partners President Craig Johnson said. The retail consultancy has 18 members studying customer traffic in different parts of the US.
However, many stores were packed. At Toys R Us in New York’s Times Square, a line of about 200 shoppers, hemmed in by barricades, stretched to the corner of 45th Street and toward Sixth Avenue, where the Macy’s Inc Thanksgiving Day parade had ended a few hours earlier.
Photo: Reuters
The first shoppers through the door cheered as they were greeted by store employees donning Santa hats.
The rush on the night of the US holiday, a month before Christmas, reflects the new normal in US holiday shopping, which traditionally began the next day, Black Friday.
In an effort to attract the most eager holiday shoppers and fend off competition from Amazon.com Inc, US retailers have increasingly extended their holiday deals by opening stores on the evening of US Thanksgiving.
This hurt customer turnout on Black Friday last year, a trend analysts and consultants expect will repeat this year.
“I can wait until tomorrow, but it’s more exciting today,” said Daipayan Deb, a shopper in his mid-thirties at a packed Wal-Mart supercenter on the outskirts of Pittsburgh.
“Previously, I used to start shopping on Black Friday, but now it’s Thursday,” he said.
Early discounts at stores and online included buy one get 50 percent off on the second Star Wars toys at Target Corp, US$200 off quadcopter drones at Best Buy Co Inc, and a 50-inch Samsung smart television for US$499 at Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
Shoppers in the US spent more than US$1 billion online, 22 percent more than last year, between midnight and 5pm on Thursday, the Adobe Digital Index showed, which tracked 100 million visits to 4,500 US retail sites.
Target’s Chief Executive Brian Cornell said online sales at the discount retailer were off to a “very strong” start. Early anecdotal evidence showed stronger customer traffic and more shoppers in stores than last year, but it was still too early to comment on the overall trend.
“We will know a lot more after the evening,” he said on a media conference call.
As much as 20 percent of holiday shopping is expected to be done over the US Thanksgiving weekend this year, analysts said. The four-day shopping burst would help set the tone for the rest of the season, signaling to retailers whether they need to drop prices or change promotions.
Kimberley Turner, a mother in her forties who was shopping with her young son said she found the discounts less compelling. “I actually think the deals were better last year,” she said.
Online discounts averaging 23 percent are below last year’s 25 percent, but prices are expected to drop as more Black Friday sales come on board, Adobe Digital Index principal research analyst Tamara Gaffney said.
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