In a bid to ramp up sales and meet customer demand, several American retailers are expediting their deals meant to roll out on Black Friday, the great shopping event, to Thanksgiving Day.
Wal-Mart, Target, Amazon and several big retailers have all announced stellar deals for Black Friday and hope to cash in on the holiday season rush shopping. But it seems like they are all impatient this time. Usually, stores are closed on Thanksgiving but many are willing to forego the traditions for business this year.
Retailers are touting customer demand as the reason for this change. While most Americans still prefer the old-fashioned way of "family-time-only" during Thanksgiving, many are ready to venture out and do some shopping this time.
"We see our customers really enjoy coming out and making this new tradition of shopping after they put the turkey away with their families. Now, it's a great family shopping experience," Molly Blakeman, a Wal-Mart spokesperson was quoted as saying by The Newark Advocate.
Another reason why retailers are offering their deals earlier is because Thanksgiving arrived late this year. Experts say this year's deals could be better than previous ones because "shortening the traditional holiday buying season for retailer" may give them "an incentive to offer deeper discounts, with many of those appearing before Black Friday," CBS News cited Deborah Fowler, associate professor at Texas Tech University.
Retailers are also choosing the right time to start their sales to optimise on customer traffic and serve them better.
But why go shopping on Thanksgiving when "Black Thursday" has the better deals, asks USA Today.
The whole point of shopping during Black Friday is to score the maximum discount one can. An analysis by Adobe Digital Index showed that the lowest average price discounts across multiple retailers were being offered on Thanksgiving Day – lower than Black Friday and Cyber Monday. In fact, the analysis found that by Cyber Monday, prices would be back to normal!
Some argue that Thanksgiving Day is good for certain merchandise only like books, tablets, video games, movies, music and TVs. However, Black Friday is your shopping day if you are looking to buy headphones, laptops, iPhones and gardening material.
Many analysts are urging people to take advantage of the pre-Black Friday deals but also caution that not all deals are going to be good. While experts are divided evenly on Black Friday and Thanksgiving Day sales, they assert shopper discretion.
"Black Friday will always be a significant part of the holiday sales effort, although the consumer behavior is changing. Last year Black Friday clocked about $9.7 billion in sales, compared with Super Saturday [the last Saturday before Christmas], which was $9.4 billion. I think this year will be the second time in the last 10 years that Black Friday will fall out of the No. 1 position. It's being impacted by early November promotions as well as store hours on Thanksgiving Day," Bill Martin, founder of retail analytics firm ShopperTrak was quoted as saying by The Record.
