Called Black Friday, but now actually beginning up to a week before Thanksgiving, when brick-and-mortar and online retailers begin boasting seasonal sales, the day after the nation’s day of thanks has always been seen as the official start to the holiday gift shopping season. Any growth would be a reversal from previous year, when retail spending over the Thanksgiving weekend fell 11 percent.
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Crowds at the major retailers across the USA proved today that Americans are willing still to wake up in the wee hours of the morning to score a deal on Black Friday.
Whether it’s crazier on Thanksgiving or Black Friday, during the holiday season employees are going to stay busy while customers shop until Santa Claus drops down the chimney. This year, he noted, the company put 96 percent of its door-buster deals online, up from about 90 percent last year. “Then, we made a decision to go to Dolphin Mall and finish our shopping”. “The good news is the vast majority of customers were able to check out successfully”.
Although he does not traditionally shop on Black Friday, Alan Batchelor of Vacaville was at Best Buy to make a purchase. Walmart expects 75 percent of its web traffic to come from mobile devices this year. On Thursday night, chief executive Brian Cornell told reporters that Target.com had not had any issues.
That’s something Keith Nelson noticed as he stood in line on Thanksgiving, waiting for Toys R Us’ 5 p.m. open: “Lines used to be longer, people would be sleeping and bringing lounge chairs out here”, he said. And forget the fisticuffs over flat-screen TVs. Deals and store hours for in-store and online shoppingBlack Friday shopping bleeds into Thursday now. Its top selling product online was the Nintendo Wii U.
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.
Lines at South Bay shopping centers wrapped around the building and people walked out with large electronic items. “So the crowds aren’t that bad”, Sharma said.
That sentiment seemed to be shared by many other Thanksgiving shoppers, most of whom shared that it didn’t matter much to them whether they were shopping on Thanksgiving or Black Friday, they were just committed to looking for sales on whichever days the stores were open.
Wal-Mart said “tens of millions of customers” visited its digital and physical stores, adding that more than 25 million shoppers accessed its store maps and digital ads in preparation for the event.
Yet again, trend experts say there’s no single item that’s making shoppers run to stores.
What is changing is when and how people shop.
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In San Francisco, shoppers lined up in front of an Old Navy on Market Street Thursday for the Overnight Millionaire contest, a million-dollar jackpot that the store offers to shoppers who wait in line for the prize.
