Malls and stores around Spokane were humming with shoppers on Black Friday, but many said the traditional frenzy to score the best deals in the early morning seems to be dying out.
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What is changing is when and how people shop.
Toys “R” Us is offering the “vast majority” of its Black Friday deals to online shoppers as well this year, said Richard Barry, executive vice president and global chief merchandising officer with the retailer. “Do remember, the holiday is all about experiences and it will be a long holiday shopping season that goes all the way through December 31”.
Overall, the National Retail Federation expected about 30 million to shop on Thanksgiving, compared with 99.7 million on Black Friday.
Gallup, on the other hand, said consumers planned to sharply increase their spending on presents – laying out $830, up 15.3% from a year ago. And sales on Thanksgiving dropped by the same percentage, to $1.8 billion. Then the 29-year-old from Chicago called her husband, who was in the toy department with their cart, and told him to come pick her up.
They said waking up that early was worth it. “We had quite a bit of fun, we got to experiment with makeup and it wasn’t crowded”, Romero said.
“There’s different deals at different times of the year”, he said.
Why venture out into the retail madness? She said on average she got about 40 percent to 50 percent off but she was looking for more.
“Today, I figured they’d have some good stuff still, as long as you’re here early”, he said. Black Friday, which traditionally is the biggest shopping day of the year, nearly looked like a normal shopping day. Justin and Eric Beyer are now both in their 20s and have embraced their mother’s tradition – it’s become part of the family Thanksgiving celebration. Everyone is saying it’s going online and I think that’s going to be true in some ways. “It pulls our family together”. It’s best to stick to reputable, well-known companies. After a disappointing third quarter, Macy’s CEO Terry Lundgren said he’s encouraged by the retailer’s Black Friday crowds.
LONDON, United Kingdom-Hordes of British Christmas shoppers swapped the High Street for the internet on “Black Friday”, leaving stores unusually quiet but delivering Amazon its biggest ever sales day in the country.
Online sales are definitely becoming a bigger factor.
While the predicted in-store chaos of past year failed to materialise, analysts have forecast that the flood of customers snapping up deals online could lead to a total four-day spend of £3.2 billion.
In response, Wal-Mart and Target will be making all of the deals available later in the stores online Thanksgiving morning. Those numbers are roughly in line with past year.
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Page load times for the United Kingdom retailer exceeded 10 seconds, in stark contrast to the 0.5 second page load time of its competitor Amazon, and beyond the two-second threshold which some analysts say makes consumers impatient and more likely to give up on a purchase. The tablets, plus gaming consoles, TVs and movies were some of the retailer’s best-sellers. There were also some surprising hits this year, such as a three-foot-tall teddy bear that sold out within minutes at many Target stores.
