Shoppers started lining up outside of Goody’s at 2pm. Shogren and several others camped outside the store as early as Wednesday evening for the 5 p.m. opening on Thursday. Omar said they have been doing the same thing for a long time already and they are simply following what their parents did when it comes to taking advantage of the Best Buy Black Friday deals.
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“Love the day, love the people – they’re very accommodating service people here, very appreciative of the business, and it’s real good bargains”, Margret Robitaille said. “To put this in perspective, previous year we saw 19 percent [same-store sales] growth for midday Thanksgiving, and we ended Thanksgiving up 20 percent”. Hassan said they may return to their homes to eat and there are some instances when they bring the turkey with them for their Thanksgiving lunch or dinner.
But old habits die slowly.
“Just want to get here early”.
“Beating the crowd to see if I can get what I want”. “It used to be Black Friday at 7-am, now it’s on Thanksgiving, it’s not Black Friday anymore”, Price said.
Hundreds of people lined nine levels of escalators Thursday at Macy’s Herald Square in Manhattan to get a head start on the deals.
“Most of the shoppers have been through this before in previous years, so they kind of know what to expect, know how we work”, manager Tim Lundberg told NBC station WGRZ of Buffalo. “We heard about this one, the $150 one”, said Anita Thomas.
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The National Retail Federation estimates that almost 136 million people will shop in stores or online during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.
