Although he does not traditionally shop on Black Friday, Alan Batchelor of Vacaville was at Best Buy to make a purchase.
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But this year, stores around Britain were serene as consumers shunned the crowds and shopped from the comfort of their home or office.
In true British style, small, polite queues formed outside Currys PC World at Great Northern Retail Park, Huddersfield, and outside Tesco Extra in Batley, which opened at 6am and 5am respectively. Stores like Best Buy in Vestal saw a steady flow of traffic throughout the store on both Thursday and Friday.
Cowen analyst Oliver Chen estimates online traffic during Black Friday weekend will be up 20% vs. a year earlier and in-store traffic will be down 2% to 4%, according to a report out Friday morning recapping his store visits.
Still, the day after the holiday remains the more popular day to go to the mall.
Bryan Roberts of analysts Kantar Retail said Black Friday appeared to be “something of a damp squib” in city centres and shopping malls.
Meanwhile, for those who didn’t feel like joining the throngs today, there’s always tomorrow – some retailers say they’ll keep the deals coming for a few days more.
Traffic through the lakes area was busy Friday with crowds reported in area stores and parking lots sporting many vehicles from Herberger’s to Big Lots in the Westgate Mall to numerous shops and big box stores in Baxter and Brainerd. There will be new deals released every 5 minutes in the form of Lightning Deals which are limited time, limited quantity deals that typically sell out very quickly.
Christopher North, managing director of Amazon.co.uk, said: “For the second year straight, customers in the United Kingdom have blown us away with their response”.
Whether they cut Thanksgiving dinner early to snag a deal or waited until Friday morning shoppers saved money on their own time. By contrast, the National Retail Federation expects total holiday retail sales, including in-store and online, to grow 3.7 percent.
“I’m buying the kids’ Christmas (stuff) and my nieces and nephews too”, said Hormilla. She said Wal-Mart didn’t have the tablet she wanted for her son.
Target’s sales were drawing attention in part because of a strategy created to compete with online-only retailers such as Amazon, with Target working to integrate the online and in-store shopping experiences.
Target – Opens 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day through midnight. Big department-store chains including Macys (M) and Nordstrom (JWN) reported lackluster results thanks to an array of factors including a stronger dollar that prevented worldwide shoppers from spending money in American stores, and an unusually warm start to the winter, which kept consumers from spending their money on items like boots, coats, and down comforters.
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“We started last night at Walmart right after Thanksgiving dinner, and it’s been awesome”. Everyone is saying it’s going online and I think that’s going to be true in some ways.
