Posted on 11/29/2014 9:00:50 AM PST by Kaslin
Here's a pair of conflicting stories regarding Black Friday shopping.
Crowds Thin
Yahoo!Finance reports Black Friday Shopping Crowds Thin After Thanksgiving Rush.
Mall crowds were relatively thin early on Black Friday in a sign of what has become the new normal in U.S. holiday shopping: the mad rush is happening the night of Thanksgiving and more consumers are picking up deals online.Brisk Sales
"It just looks like any other weekend," said Angela Olivera, a 32-year old housewife shopping for children's clothing at the Westfarms Mall near Hartford, Connecticut. "The kind of crowds we usually see are missing and this is one of the biggest malls here. I think people are just not spending a lot."
Parking lots at some shopping malls filled up around the country on Friday, as shoppers kept up the tradition of scouring stores for holiday deals even though some retailers had been open on Thanksgiving and even overnight.Is traffic up or down? Perhaps it varies by region. Two safe bets: Online shopping is up, and Black Friday is losing importance as shopping is spread out over more days.
Big retailers, many of whom kicked off sales Thursday evening, reported brisk traffic overnight. Walmart said that 22 million shoppers streamed through stores across the country on Thanksgiving Day, more than the number of people who visit Disney’s Magic Kingdom in an entire year, the retail giant pointed out.
Still, as retailers jump-start their deals earlier and more sales move online, Black Friday itself is starting to fade in importance.
Target said its best-selling goods in store were the Element 40” TV, the Xbox One, iPads and Nikon’s L330 camera. In the first hour of stores opening, Target sold 1,800 TVs per minute and 2,000 video games per minute, the retailer said in a release. Keurig’s K40 brewer and Dyson’s DC50 vacuum were other top sellers, Target said.
Economists are closely watching whether retailers can entice shoppers to spend during what retailers consider the biggest shopping weekend of the year, especially after a year of lackluster sales so far. A brightening economic outlook, and ever-cheaper gas prices, are starting to lift consumer confidence. But there are also signs of lingering wariness among consumers, after what has been an uneven economic recovery marked by anemic wage growth, especially for low-income households.
And online, which makes up a bigger share of holiday sales each year, retailers have been offering Black Friday deals for many days now, stretching what was once a one-day shopping frenzy into a week or more of sales.
Online retailers have also driven the heavier-than-ever discounting this year. Amazon has priced out many of the country’s biggest retailers in the big-ticket holiday items, offering a Samsung 55-inch 4K flat-screen television for $899. Dealnews.com, which closely tracks Black Friday deals, declared Amazon’s deal “without a doubt” the cheapest name-brand 4K television it had ever seen.
IBM Digital Analytics, which tracks online shopping transactions in the United States, said sales rose 12 percent between midnight and 6 p.m. Eastern time Thanksgiving Day.
I buy things that I plan to buy at a price I think is fair. I don’t do huge crowds or huge traffic for just about any reason. If I can’t get a fair price just walking into a store, then I’m not interested.
I ventured into walmart at 6PM on Thanksgiving to see if I could get the 50” TV. They of course did not have them, but they handed out tickets for the item. You pay for it and register on their website to be notified when it arrives. There were a lot of people, but it was all very calm and orderly and I was in and out in maybe 20 minutes.
And now Blacks are boycotting Black?
I don’t intend to splurge on presents this year - just one or two well-thought out gifts to family members.
My son-in law just told me he was in a Kohl’s ,here in MA., yesterday and the lines went from the registers to the back of the store.The wait was close to 2 hours. Better him than me.
People fighting for off-off-brand TVs.
Most of this crap will end up at garage sales next spring. My wife especially loves those 30 dollar Yankee Candles gifts that she can score for 2.00. They still smell just as good 4 months from now.
How bout White Friday?
See, you can't win for losing with these idiots.
I am with you.....has always been that way for me
All I know is I didn’t contribute to Black Friday. I stayed away in droves.
“Isn’t BLACK Friday racist?”
I assume you are being sarcastic with this.....if not then you need to read a little history of retailing in the twentieth century
I have a theory that people willing to wait in long lines like that, have no military experience. I'm a vet with 4 years experience, I got filled to the brim with involuntarily waiting in long lines. No more, ever.
I didn't think my stupid joke needed the /s tag!
that is why I asked because my brain has slowed with age and sometimes what I assume is sarcasm isn’t and then people get offended because I take it that way.
The failure was mine not yours
So belatedly I will now have a good chuckle.
No military experience but extreme patience.
I think the term identifies when retail stores books go from red to black. They desperately need the holiday season to be profitable.
Don’t buy GE products this holiday season! Jeff Immelt is an Obama stooge and a crony capitalist. He also controls NBC news like the fascist that he is.
IIRC, a 50” Panasonic TV (hardly an “off brand”) was selling for $200 at either Best Buy or Wally World. Unfortunately, I don’t need a new TV, the budget is tight, and we have no room for anything nearly that big...
Everyone was well behaved - maybe it’s this semi-rural area?
I did most of my purchasing online, Th. evening. I did hit Wally World on Th. — the aisles around the 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. “bins” were pretty busy, but overall the store was not as packed as in some years past. Then hit Staples Fri. morning for a printer paper deal - the place was almost deserted. There were 5 cars in front (including mine) and at least a dozen forlorn salespeople inside. (It was down to 3 cars in front when I walked out.) There were plenty of good deals @ Staples - maybe everyone else did the online bit too? Best Buy was only moderately busy (I did not go in), and Home Depot was moderately busy too (but out of the Milwaukee cordless drill w/ 3 batteries for $99 - RATS!!!) Menards was packed, but even though I got there 3 hours after opening, I snagged every item on my list there. But they ran out of shopping carts and I was dragging around a trash barrel to carry my goodies. And I gotta send in all the rebate forms...
If anybody is selling that Milwaukee drill (w/ light use) for a good price, next spring, I’d probably still be interested!
On the news here in NJ they admitted Black Friday was lighter than in years past, but tried to attribute it to the stores being open on Thanksgiving (though they hadn’t shown mad rushes on that day either, as we’ve had in the past). They threw the online shopping in the mix to explain it away, and never alluded to the fact that people in NJ are hurting financially. Our decent jobs are gone, our taxes are high, and the media ignores both problems...
Of course BLACK Friday is racist, haven’t you ever read Robinson Crusoe?
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