It was another busy Black Friday today for local merchants – just not as intense as it used to be.
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The women don’t usually shop on Thanksgiving, believing Black Friday is taking too large a bite out of the family holiday, but headed out early Friday.
Store employees say they hope spreading the deals over a few days gave shoppers what they were looking for while keeping everyone safe.
Jorgette Clark, 27, said her budget would probably be lower this year because her husband works in the energy industry.
“US consumers have turned into digital shopping ninjas”, Adobe analyst Tamara Gaffney said.
While the number-crunching and calculating to find out which retailer had the best Black Friday has already begun, a recent study from Boomerang found that Amazon had the cheapest Black Friday deals of the year, according to a report from Yahoo. Instead of lining up outside stores for hours to get those deals, Walmart shoppers this year were able to purchase items like a $125 Roku 32-inch TV from the comfort of their homes.
Twenty years ago, for example, Thanksgiving hours were unimaginable. It continued to advance.
It’s a Super Bowl that has Target changing it’s game by opening its doors from 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving to 11 p.m. on Friday for the past two years.
What the stores did thereafter varied. “It’s insane.” LUSH Cosmetics opened Thanksgiving night. (AEO.N) saw more traffic due to store-wide discounts of 40 percent.
Consider the opening scenes at Best Buy, on Hempstead Road.
With more than 1,200 of the world’s leading retailers, malls and entertainment venues, ShopperTrak deploys over 80,000 devices across 97 countries and territories. In a strip mall that included Kmart, every store was open, but the only one with a shopper inside was Starbucks. She said Wal-Mart didn’t have the tablet she wanted for her son.
Nakeya Julian, a retail sales associate for The North Face in the Desert Hills Premium Outlets, said crowds had been coming in waves since the stores opened on Thanksgiving.
“My other one was old”, she said. That’s what it feels like and that’s what it looks like….
The good news for retailers is that shoppers are ready to spend 25% more this year than last – or an average of $369 each.
Unusually warm weather is another added bonus on this Black Friday.
Carolann Craft, store manager of the Ephrata Wal-Mart, saw Black Friday the same way.
Reiter, an economics student on an global studies program at UC Riverside, said she and her friends had been shopping since 1 a.m. “The frenzy and traffic levels were subdued”, said Craig Johnson, president of Customer Growth Partners, a retail consultancy. Samsung TVs, the iPad Air 2, Xbox, Lego Dimension sets, Star Wars Lego toys and Shopkin Dolls were among the most popular items on Black Friday, Adobe said.
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“I’m from NY and I’ve never done Black Friday before”, she said. Customers can use the app to buy merchandise and have it brought to their cars while they wait at curbside, at no extra cost. Until retailers stop the Black Friday madness, these insane fights are going to continue to happen. At the Shoppes on Market on South Market Street in Elizabethtown, business was “very brisk” and “very strong”, said Dolores Reidenbach.
