Retailers shift strategy for Thanksgiving
Some will be closed on holiday, but others will be open as e-commerce keeps growing
Several Houstonarea stores will open their doors on Thanksgiving Day, despite consumers’ continued criticism of the practice.
Several Houston-area stores will open their doors on Thanksgiving Day, despite consumers’ continued criticism of the practice.
Target, Walmart, Best Buy and other national retailers will launch their Black Friday bonanzas on Thursday, offering deep discounts to shoppers willing to brave long lines and crowded parking lots.
Some retailers, though, are curtailing their hours amid growing fears of social media backlash. Other retailers are extending their holiday hours to boost lagging sales in the Amazon era.
Target plans to open its stores on Thanksgiving from 6 p.m. to midnight and reopen on Black Friday at 6 a.m. That’s a change from last year, when the Minneapolis-based retailer kept its stores open overnight.
J.C. Penney is going the other direction with plans to open doors one hour earlier this year. The Plano-based retailer, which has struggled to compete with the rise of e-commerce, plans to open on Thanksgiving from 2 p.m. straight until 10 p.m. on Black Friday.
Cabela’s, the Nebraska-based outdoor retailer that was acquired by Missouri-based Bass Pro Shops earlier this year in a $4 billion deal, was closed on Thanksgiving in previous years but will be open on the holiday this year.
“Some stores can afford to close on Thanksgiving,” said Phil Dengler, the founder of New Jersey-based BestBlackFriday. com, which has tracked Black Friday deals and trends since 2011. “Other stores can’t afford to do it because it’s too much business to lose.”
Some retailers, including Nordstorm and Costco, are choosing to close for Thanksgiving.
Stein Mart, a Jacksonville, Fla.-based discount retailer, was open on Thanksgiving last year but decided to close this year to
give employees and consumers more time to spend with family.
Houston-based Mattress Firm plans to stay closed as well.
“Since 1986 we’ve set out to be a different kind of retailer, and because of that we won’t be following the trend of opening our stores on Thanksgiving Day,” the company’s CEO, Ken Murphy, said in a statement. “We appreciate the hard work and dedication of our employees throughout the year and believe they deserve to spend the holiday with their loved ones.”
Although most major malls, including the Galleria, will be open, Pearland Town Center plans to give its employees a day off on Thanksgiving. Outdoor retailer REI will stay closed throughout the four-day weekend.
“Retailers are making the best business decisions, based on what they’re hearing from employees, consumers and also from sales,” said Ana Serafin Smith, a spokeswoman for the National Retail Federation.
The explosive growth of e-commerce in recent years is changing the way retailers approach Black Friday, said Venky Shankar, research director of retailing studies at Texas A&M University.
For the first time last year, sales on Cyber Monday eclipsed Black Friday, $3.65 billion to $3.5 billion. Earlier this month, Ali Baba, China’s counterpart to Amazon, sold $25 billion of goods online on Nov. 11, a holiday called Single’s Day.
More than 80 percent of shopping today starts on a mobile phone, and online shopping will continue to grow as millennials come of age, Shankar said.
“Black Friday is much less important today than it used to be,” Shankar said. “Cyber Monday is taking over as online and mobile are expanding.”
Black Friday’s impact is further neutralized when retailers launch holiday discounts as early as Nov. 1.
“A shopper’s budget is not elastic — they have to spend it on a few retailers,” Shankar said. “That’s the reason why some stores start Black Friday earlier. They want to get at your budget before you spend it at Amazon or somewhere else.”
Retailers who launch their discounts early and have a strong online presence can afford to close or curb their store hours on Thanksgiving. Retailers can continue to net online sales while spreading out inventory and staff over the four-day weekend.
Plus, retailers can avoid criticism from shoppers, many of whom protest Black Friday’s encroachment on Thanksgiving. BestBlackFriday.com’s survey of 523 website visitors found that 84 percent of respondents did not favor retailers opening on Thanksgiving, Dengler said.
“More stores are worried about opening too early,” Shankar said. “Consumers realize they may be getting a deal on the backs of employees. There’s a guilty feeling that shoppers have.”
On the other hand, employees at retailers’ warehouse and distribution centers will likely continue working through the holiday to fulfill online orders.
“Fulfillment is done around the clock,” Shankar said. “You can’t have a complete day off because retailers have a commitment to fulfill an order in 24 or 48 hours.”
Some 164 million Americans are expected to shop online and in stores over Thanksgiving weekend, according to the National Retail Federation. The busiest day will be Black Friday with 115 million shoppers, followed by Cyber Monday’s 78 million shoppers.
Thanksgiving Day shoppers represent the smallest group, estimated at 32 million.
Many of these shoppers would rather be spending time with family and friends, but can’t shake the concern of missing a great deal on a new TV or must-have Christmas toy. But others may need some breathing room after a contentious political debate over the turkey, the National Retail Federation’s Serafin Smith said.
“Some consumers are interested in getting shopping done to get ahead of the crowds, but some are doing it to get away from family,” Serafin Smith said. “When you’ve got family coming in town, you may need a break.”
paul.takahashi@chron.com twitter.com/paultakahashi