It would have been easy to turn on their computers at home over plates of leftover turkey and take advantage of the Black Friday deals most retailers now offer online.
Yet across the US, thousands of shoppers flocked to stores on Thanksgiving or woke up before dawn the next day to take part in this most famous ritual of American consumerism.
Shoppers spent their holiday lined up outside the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, by 4pm on Thursday, and the crowd had swelled to 3,000 people by the time the doors opened at 5am on Friday.
Photo: AFP
In Ohio, a group of women was so determined, they booked a hotel room for Thursday night to be closer to the stores.
In New York City, one woman went straight from a dance club to a department store in the middle of the night.
Many shoppers said Black Friday is as much about the spectacle as it is about doorbuster deals, while brick-and-mortar stores have worked hard to prove they can counter the competition from online behemoth Amazon.com Inc.
From Macy’s Inc to Target Corp and Walmart Inc, retailers are blending their online and store shopping experience with new tools, such as digital maps on smartphones and more options for shoppers to buy online and pick up at stores. Customers, frustrated with long checkout lines, can even check out at Walmart and other stores with a salesperson in store aisles.
Consumers nearly doubled their online orders that they picked up at stores from Wednesday until Thanksgiving, said Adobe Analytics, which tracks online spending.
The holiday shopping season presents a big test for a US economy, the overall growth of which has so far this year relied on a burst of consumer spending.
Americans upped their spending during the first half of this year at the strongest pace in four years, yet retail sales gains have tapered off recently. The sales totals over the next month will be a good indicator as to whether consumers simply paused to catch their breath or feel less optimistic about the economy next year.
The National Retail Federation, the nation’s largest retail trade group, is expecting holiday retail sales to increase by as much as 4.8 percent from last year for a total of US$720.89 billion. The sales growth marks a slowdown from last year’s 5.3 percent, but remains healthy.
The retail economy is also tilting steeply toward online shopping. Over the past 12 months, purchases at non-store retailers such as Amazon have jumped 12.1 percent as sales at traditional department stores have slumped 0.3 percent.
Adobe Analytics said that Thanksgiving reached a record US$3.7 billion in online retail sales, up 28 percent from the same period a year ago.
For Black Friday, online spending was on track to hit more than US$6.4 billion, Adobe said.
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