Black Friday Shopping—With Thinner Crowds
American consumers are spending more online and making fewer visits to stores, though masses still circulate through stores
By SUZANNE KAPNER
Updated Nov. 28, 2015 12:01 a.m. ET
U.S. retailers pushed customers to seek holiday bargains even earlier this year, offering discounts online and in stores well before the traditional Black Friday shopping day.
As a result, throngs on Friday at malls and shopping districts from Charlotte, N.C., to Los Angeles were noticeably thinner than in previous years.
Several major retailers had already opened their doors on Thanksgiving Day, and many have been promoting Black Friday-style specials online for a week or more.
But the risk is that they are driving sales earlier, and could be sacrificing in-store foot traffic, which can lead to impulse purchases.
“It’s not that people aren’t coming to stores,” said Jerry Storch, the chief executive of Hudson’s Bay Co., which owns Saks Fifth Avenue and Lord & Taylor. “It’s that traffic patterns are shifting.” With more stores open on Thursday, shoppers don’t feel the need to shop early Friday morning, he said.
Driving up to a nearly empty parking lot at a Wal-Mart in Houston Friday morning, Dora Rodriguez, 39 years old, stopped her silver hatchback in surprise and called out her window to another shopper: “Excuse me, the Black Friday sale—it’s ended already?”
Inside the store, there was no jostling for the television Ms. Rodriguez had come to find, no long lines.
“It’s not Black Friday anymore,” one worker told some shoppers asking about prices. “It’s Black Thursday. All the sales were on Thursday.”
According to Visa, e-commerce spending on Thanksgiving from its U.S. account holders increased 22% to $1.5 billion from last year. Amazon.com Inc.’s sales on Thursday rose 29% compared with a year ago, according to ChannelAdvisor Corp., which makes e-commerce software and measures online transactions.
For the first time, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. made the majority of its Black Friday deals available online in the wee hours of Thanksgiving morning—some 15 hours before its stores opened. So many shoppers visited Wal-Mart’s website when the door-busters went on sale early Thursday that the site was overloaded and checkouts were snarled.
Walmart.com did “slow down for a little bit when customers were checking out,” Steve Bratspies, the company’s new chief merchant, said. “The vast majority had no issues.” On Friday, luxury department store chain Neiman Marcus Inc. struggled with a website outage that lasted several hours.
Analysts interpreted the move by Wal-Mart and other maneuvers by Target Corp. and J.C. Penney Co. as an attempt to win shoppers back from Amazon whose product discounts and shipping promotions are eating away at retail profits.
Amazon also has shifted its promotions earlier into November as surveys have shown that Americans start their holiday shopping long before Black Friday. The giant online retailer kicked off its “Black Friday” event, consisting of eight days of holiday deals, on Friday, Nov. 20—nearly a week earlier than last year.
“Digital sales as a percent of total sales is way up at Kohl’s this week,” Kohl’s Corp. CEO Kevin Mansell said in an interview Friday. “It’s exceeding even our pretty aggressive forecast.”
Early Friday at the Crossgates Mall in Albany, N.Y., shopper traffic wasn’t nearly as intense as years past, said Christian Benincasa, who was working his third-straight year at a Finish Line store.
Article Source: http://www.wsj.com/articles/black-friday-shoppingwith-thinner-crowds-1448639398
By SUZANNE KAPNER
Updated Nov. 28, 2015 12:01 a.m. ET
U.S. retailers pushed customers to seek holiday bargains even earlier this year, offering discounts online and in stores well before the traditional Black Friday shopping day.
As a result, throngs on Friday at malls and shopping districts from Charlotte, N.C., to Los Angeles were noticeably thinner than in previous years.
Several major retailers had already opened their doors on Thanksgiving Day, and many have been promoting Black Friday-style specials online for a week or more.
But the risk is that they are driving sales earlier, and could be sacrificing in-store foot traffic, which can lead to impulse purchases.
“It’s not that people aren’t coming to stores,” said Jerry Storch, the chief executive of Hudson’s Bay Co., which owns Saks Fifth Avenue and Lord & Taylor. “It’s that traffic patterns are shifting.” With more stores open on Thursday, shoppers don’t feel the need to shop early Friday morning, he said.
Driving up to a nearly empty parking lot at a Wal-Mart in Houston Friday morning, Dora Rodriguez, 39 years old, stopped her silver hatchback in surprise and called out her window to another shopper: “Excuse me, the Black Friday sale—it’s ended already?”
Inside the store, there was no jostling for the television Ms. Rodriguez had come to find, no long lines.
“It’s not Black Friday anymore,” one worker told some shoppers asking about prices. “It’s Black Thursday. All the sales were on Thursday.”
According to Visa, e-commerce spending on Thanksgiving from its U.S. account holders increased 22% to $1.5 billion from last year. Amazon.com Inc.’s sales on Thursday rose 29% compared with a year ago, according to ChannelAdvisor Corp., which makes e-commerce software and measures online transactions.
For the first time, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. made the majority of its Black Friday deals available online in the wee hours of Thanksgiving morning—some 15 hours before its stores opened. So many shoppers visited Wal-Mart’s website when the door-busters went on sale early Thursday that the site was overloaded and checkouts were snarled.
Walmart.com did “slow down for a little bit when customers were checking out,” Steve Bratspies, the company’s new chief merchant, said. “The vast majority had no issues.” On Friday, luxury department store chain Neiman Marcus Inc. struggled with a website outage that lasted several hours.
Analysts interpreted the move by Wal-Mart and other maneuvers by Target Corp. and J.C. Penney Co. as an attempt to win shoppers back from Amazon whose product discounts and shipping promotions are eating away at retail profits.
Amazon also has shifted its promotions earlier into November as surveys have shown that Americans start their holiday shopping long before Black Friday. The giant online retailer kicked off its “Black Friday” event, consisting of eight days of holiday deals, on Friday, Nov. 20—nearly a week earlier than last year.
“Digital sales as a percent of total sales is way up at Kohl’s this week,” Kohl’s Corp. CEO Kevin Mansell said in an interview Friday. “It’s exceeding even our pretty aggressive forecast.”
Early Friday at the Crossgates Mall in Albany, N.Y., shopper traffic wasn’t nearly as intense as years past, said Christian Benincasa, who was working his third-straight year at a Finish Line store.
Article Source: http://www.wsj.com/articles/black-friday-shoppingwith-thinner-crowds-1448639398
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