Is Black Friday still worth the hype?
Busy shopping day remains key to traditional retailers
Traditional sales frenzy diluted by online deals
Can Black Friday live up to the hype of being the biggest shopping day of the year? Retailers are about to find out. Black Friday’s sales power has been diluted by e-commerce deals that kick off early in No- vember and so-called deep-discount “doorbuster” specials that are rolled out throughout the holiday weekend, including Thanksgiving Day. But it’s still a critical piece of the all-important holiday shopping season, which contributes an out-sized chunk of retailer revenue.
“It is less important simply because sales are stretched over a longer period of time,” Toys R Us CEO Dave Brandon says. “But make no mistake ... It’s a very big shopping day and certainly one of the elements of the shopping season we need to execute well if we want to be successful.”
The National Retail Federation predicts Black Friday will be the winner this holiday weekend, with 74% of consumers planning to shop the day after Thanksgiving, compared to 21% expecting to scour deals on the holiday. A Deloitte survey of 1,200 consumers also found that 79% said they expected to shop on Black Friday.
“Black Friday remains one of the busiest shopping days of the year, with Americans planning to take advantage of aggressive instore and digital promotions over the entire holiday weekend,” Matthew Shay, president and
CEO of NRF said in a statement.
Black Friday deals now go far beyond a single day. RadioShack, for instance, began offering special prices last Friday and will extend them through Monday.
Walmart began offering some Black Friday specials, including an Acer laptop for less than $300 and a $79 trampoline, on Nov. 10 to shoppers who had downloaded the store’s app. Most of its Black Friday discounts will become available online starting at 12:01 a.m. Thanksgiving Day.
The Black Friday shopping frenzy is increasingly moving online, and Black Friday net sales in-store have been in decline, according to analytics firm RetailNext. Sales dipped 1.6% last year as compared to 2014 and dropped 14.1% in 2014 from the previous year. Traffic also slipped, dropping 1.8% in 2015 vs. the previous year and 16% in 2014 as compared to 2013.
But while e-commerce, and mobile shopping in particular, is surging, traditional retailers still garner roughly 90% of their sales in the actual store. Black Friday remains a key event to get shoppers in the door.
Toys R Us will open its doors at 5 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day and then will keep the stores open for 30 consecutive hours. It’s a move it hopes will woo consumers off the couch and boost sales this Black Friday above previous years. Besides giving shoppers a major window in which to shop, “we’ve put together a long list . ... of discount and incentives for people to visit our store,” Brandon says.
Brian Yarbrough, consumer analyst at Edward Jones, said many retailers are coming up with innovative ways to get shoppers to actually come out to the storefront.
“They offer store only deals,” he says. “Some will begin at 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving night and some will be at noon the following day. They want to keep traffic consistent.”
The Black Friday shopping frenzy is increasingly moving online, and Black Friday net sales in-store have been in decline.