Black Friday loses its luster as stores spread out deals
Saturday before Christmas has become bigger day
little question that Black Friday has lost some of its mojo.
The frenzied shopping experience for years sparked long lines, bustling crowds and fever-tossed shelves. But in the past two holiday seasons, Black Friday lost its title as the busiest shopping day of the year. With competition from e-commerce, along with doorbuster specials offered earlier in the month and Thanksgiving Day sales, shoppers don’t have to wait for Black Friday to grab a deal.
Consulting company Deloitte sends researchers out on Black Friday to gauge traffic patterns at major malls, and “over the last couple of years, (they) have said, ‘Is it supposed to be this dead?’ ” said Rod Sides, DeBut loitte’s leader of U.S. retail and distribution practice. “It’s interesting how much traffic has fallen off in the last three or four years around that particular event and on that particular day.”
The Black Friday shopping marathon surged in the 1980s, and over the years, retailers opened their doors earlier and earlier, leading to the now-common starting time of 6 a.m., said Scott Bauer, the lead of consultancy PwC’s digital retail practice.
It became the biggest shopping day of the year. But, in 2014, the Saturday before Christmas surpassed Black Friday in actual sales. In 2015, “Super Saturday” once again was the top shopping day of the year. And this year, with Christmas falling on a Sunday, the Friday before is poised to potentially usurp both Black Friday and Super Saturday when it comes to sales, according to the National Retail Federation.
The recent trend of retailers opening their doors on ThanksThere’s giving Day has also had an effect on Black Friday’s selling power. Macy’s, for instance, will open at 5 p.m. on Thanksgiving — an hour earlier than last year.
But some stores and malls are closing on Thanksgiving, in part because the extra shopping day was dimming some of Black Friday’s gleam.
“There is no question that heavy discounting early in the holiday sales season, both online and in stores, along with retailers opening their doors on Thanksgiving Day, have cut into Black Friday sales,” said Ana Serafin Smith, spokeswoman for the National Retail Federation.
The move away from starting Black Friday on Thanksgiving is growing.
“There really was a strong pushback to the concept of being open on Thanksgiving just from an employee point of view,” said Stephen Lebovitz, president and CEO of CBL & Associates Properties Inc., which after being open on the holiday the past three years is closing 72 of its 89 malls this Thanksgiving.
while he said giving mall and store employees the holiday off was the primary motivation for the decision to close, sales were also not getting an overall boost from being open that extra day.
“The sales tended to spread out over a longer period of time, but they weren’t increasing,” he said. “The other factor was we felt Black Friday had traditionally been a really fun, exciting experience for the shopper and that it was losing some of its luster and being diluted.”
Deals are popping up as early as October. Amazon starts offering its Black Friday deals Nov. 1.
Nearly two-thirds of consumers say they will begin holiday shopping before the start of Black Friday week, while 29 percent will have completed most of it by then, according to PwC’s holiday forecast. And a Deloitte holiday survey found that 52 percent of respondents say they won’t rely on Black Friday as much this year as they used to, up from 47 percent in 2014.