Holiday start of shoppers' magical time
Buyers will use Thanksgiving to get deals and beat Black Friday crowds.
The peak of the holiday shopping season for retailers kicks off early this morning as thousands of area shoppers look for deals.
More than 164 million shoppers are expected to shop in the United States during the upcoming fiveday period, including 34 million today on Thanksgiving, according to the National Retail Federation. The next two days are the biggest revenue producers during the year for stores.
Shoppers who want to get deals without the crowds should shop today, rather than wait for Friday when 82 million more people will hit stores, said Riley Dugan, a marketing professor at the University of Dayton.
“I think everyone hates the lines. I wish I could just get in and get out ... but if you’re going to get great deals, it pays off,” said Wright State University student Megan Armentrout said.
While Armentrout works retail, she said she plans to shop late Thursday on her break between Thanksgiving and Black Friday shifts.
Shoppers will have fewer options this year to shop on Thanksgiving. While no major retailers are closed today, Best B lackFr i day. com’s list of store closures on Thanksgiving reached records. Stores such as A.C. Moore, Barnes & Noble, Burlington, Costco, H&M, Lowe’s, Nordstrom and Sam’s Club will leave their doors shut on Thanksgiving.
“Some more stores are probably not going to be open as opposed to previous years, and on the surface that’s wonderful because people are going to be spend- ing more time with their fam- ilies and that’s really what the holiday, particularly Thanksgiving, is about,” Dugan said. “But the cynic in me suggests that perhaps the reason they’re doing that is sales maybe weren’t as expected and there was no reason for the store to be open on Thanksgiving.”
Brick-and-mortar Thanks- giving and Black Friday sales, while still massive compared to the average shopping day, have started to slow in growth as online shopping increases. Sales online are expected to increase nearly 15 percent this year, according to Adobe Analytics.
There’s also a stigma asso- ciated with shopping on Thanksgiving, a traditional family holiday, that could keep retailers from opening and consumers at home.
“I certainly hope that peo- ple spend the time with their family ... there’s so many more days you can go shop- ping, including of course Black Friday and Cyber Monday, so I hope this is a trend that continues,” Dugan said.
Even the biggest of online shoppers plan to do some brick-and-mortar holiday shopping this year, including Paige Barton of Spring- boro. She prefers shopping Amazon from home but still shops on Thanksgiving with her family as a tradition.
“My cousins always come down from Toledo,” Barton said. “Instead of sitting at the house doing whatever, we’re like ‘why not go shop- ping?’”
She and her family start after their Thanksgiving gath- ering late Thursday night and shop until 5 a.m. Then they sleep a little bit before going back out to hit the rest of the stores.
“I’m always excited,” Barton said. “Saved up my money and I’m ready to go.”
Shoppers will spend more this year than others, including an expected 3.2 percent increase to $24.9 billion in Ohio as jobs and wages grow, according to the University of Cincinnati Economics Center. Dayton-area sales are among the middle of the pack, expected to grow 3 percent compared to Mansfield’s 8 percent and Cincinnati’s 1.9 percent.