Black Friday, but the Friday part of it seems to be increasingly up for grabs.
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Video has emerged of bargain-crazed shoppers descending into scenes of scrambling brawls as America’s famed Black Friday sales kick off after the Thanksgiving holiday. So plenty of stores like Macy’s, Nordstrom and Dick’s Sporting Goods say they plan to further mark down excess goods.
By the end of the day retail analyst Experian-IMRG was predicting that spending online will hit £1.07 billion, a 32 per cent increase on last year’s £810 million. And not every shopper was happy about that.
At a Kmart in Denver, Susan Montoya had almost the entire store to herself. Montoya half-heartedly flipped through a rack of girls’ holiday party dresses and looked down the store’s empty aisles. “No challenge!” she said.
The data, without year-over-year comparisons, paints an incomplete picture of the behavior and spending of USA shoppers over the weekend.
The JCPenney at the Spokane Valley Mall opened at 3 p.m. on Thanksgiving to a line of about 150 people, general manager Brandon Meyers said. “The morning was a little slower, probably due to several of the stores being open last night, but by 9:30 to 10 a.m., it started to pick back up again”. “The frenzy and traffic levels were subdued”, said Craig Johnson, president of Customer Growth Partners, a retail consultancy. As for the actual Cyber Monday/Cyber Week deals, Target is offering the Xbox One bundle with Gears of War for $299.99, but you’ll be saving more than $50, as it’s also throwing in a bonus EA sports game and three months’ worth of Xbox Live.
Neal, a member who asked that his last name not be used for privacy, said it’s his fifth year doing the drive on Black Friday.
Target has teased Cyber Week, which means you can take advantage of one whole week of deals even after Thanksgiving and Black Friday become a memory.
Now that thanksgiving is over she’s getting in the Christmas sprit. And for a decade, it had been considered the official start of the holiday buying season.
Retail expert Richard Hyman said his research had shown 26% of high street stores had opted out of Black Friday. But Deloitte’s Simpson said retailers need shoppers in the stores.
A handful of people waited outside the flagship Oxford Street department stores of John Lewis and Debenhams, which opened early and laid on 400 extra staff to deal with the expected rush. You might want to go in the early morning or evening hours, according to Google. “We go to work every day, so why not get up to come shop?” said another shopper. E-commerce sales were up 51 percent by midday on Thursday, compared with the same period a year ago, according to ChannelAdvisor, an e-commerce software company.
Brianna Orris, who said she went into the store for some kind of connector, came out with a 40-inch Smart TV under her arm.
Also hurting retailers is Amazon.com Inc.
And J.C. Penney’s CEO Marvin Ellison said that the chain worked hard to make its app more user friendly, and as a result, its online sales.
“The trend is no trend”, he said.
Hundreds of protesters blocked entrances to stores in Chicago’s high-end shopping district to draw attention to the police shooting of a black teenager.
The Green family credits Black Friday’s low prices as the reason they could get everything that they need this holiday season.
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One frustrated Argos customer tweeted: “10 min queue online, then it told me 8 days for delivery with no option for 24 hour, and then it crashed”.
