Black Friday creeps into Thanksgiving permanently?
This season could mark the end of Black Friday as we know it.
For decades, stores have opened their doors in the wee hours on the day after Thanksgiving. But this year, major chains such as Target and Sears ushered customers in on Thanksgiving itself, even before the turkey leftovers had gotten cold, turning the traditional busiest shopping day of the year into a two-day affair.
Despite an outcry from some employees, both stores and shoppers seemed to like it. Some people went shopping with a full belly, going straight from the dinner table to the stores. Others slept off their big meal and went to the mall before daybreak on Black Friday.
"I ate my turkey dinner and came right here," said Rasheed Ali, a college student in New York City who bought a 50-inch TV for $349 and a sewing machine for $50 when Target opened at 9 p.m. on Thanksgiving. "Then I'm going home and eating more."
This new approach could become a holiday shopping season tradition.
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"It's Black Thursday and Friday combined," said Jackie Fernandez, a retail expert at the consulting firm Deloitte. "This is going to be a new normal of how we shop."
It won't be clear for a few days how many shoppers took advantage of the Thanksgiving hours. But about 17 percent of people said earlier this month that they planned to shop at stores that opened on Thanksgiving, according to an International Council of Shopping Centers-Goldman Sachs survey of 1,000 consumers.
Meanwhile, 33 percent intended to shop on Black Friday, down 1 percentage point from last year. Overall, it is estimated that sales on Black Friday will be up 3.8 percent to $11.4 billion this year, according to technology company ShopperTrak, which did not forecast sales from Thanksgiving Day.
The Black Friday creep began in earnest a few years ago when stores realized that sales alone weren't enough to lure shoppers anymore, especially with Americans becoming more comfortable buying things online. Opening on Thanksgiving was risky, with some employees and shoppers complaining it was almost sacrilegious.
But many stores evidently felt they needed an edge, especially this season, when many Americans are worried about high unemployment and wondering whether Congress will be able to head off tax increases and spending cuts before the U.S. reaches the "fiscal cliff" in January.
Overall, the National Retail Federation estimates that sales in November and December will rise 4.1 percent this year to $586.1 billion, below last year's 5.6 percent.
"Every retailer wants to beat everyone else," said C. Britt Beemer, chairman of America's Research Group, a firm based in Charleston, S.C. "Shoppers love it."
At Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, most of its 4,000 U.S. namesake stores are already open 24 hours year-round. But the chain added special sales at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving, two hours earlier than a year ago.
The company said that its start to the holiday season was "the best ever," with nearly 10 million transactions and 5,000 items sold per second from 8 p.m. to midnight on Thanksgiving.
Toys R Us opened at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving, an hour earlier than last year.
Toys R Us CEO Jerry Storch told CBS News correspondent Seth Doane the calendar works in retailers' favor this year: it's the longest possible number of days between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
"This store is teeming with people who are excited to be here," said Storch. "It's a celebratory atmosphere. It's also just an incredible sea of humanity."
Macy's, which opened at midnight on Thanksgiving, had 12,000 customers wrapped around its store in New York's Herald Square.
Julie Hansen, a spokeswoman at Minneapolis' Mall of America, the nation's largest shopping center, reported that 30,000 shoppers showed up for the mall's midnight opening, up from 20,000 last year. "This was additional dollars," Hansen said. This year, 200 of the 520 mall tenants opened at midnight following Thanksgiving. That's double from a year ago.
To be sure, it's not clear whether the longer hours will turn into extra dollars for retailers, or whether sales will simply be spread out over two days.
The Thanksgiving openings appeared to create two waves of shoppers -- the late-nights and the early birds.
Sam Chandler and his wife, Lori, were among the night owls. They started shopping at midnight on Thanksgiving. By the time they reached the Wal-Mart in Greenville, S.C., early Friday, they had already hit several stores, including Target and Best Buy.
"We've learned over the years, you have to stand in line early and pray," Sam said.
Target opened Thanksgiving evening. But shopper Carloyn Shinn went early Friday morning to kick-off the Black Friday "second shift." "We avoid the crazy lines," she told CBS News. "We're not the midnight people -- we're the 6:30 a.m. people, so we're kind of between the craziness of people knocking over people to get to the deals and the fun."
Stu and April Schatz of Rockland County, N.Y., went to the Garden State Plaza mall in Paramus, N.J., which didn't open until 7 a.m. on Black Friday, because they didn't want to deal with the crowds that show up late on Thanksgiving night.
"It's so much more civilized going in the morning," said April Schatz, a teacher. "We wanted to enjoy our evening."
The boost in e-commerce may be the biggest headline, Doane reported, as it is projected to grow 17 percent this holiday season.
"Retailers are adjusting to the dot com pressures by joining the fray," said retail analyst Dana Telsey. "They are becoming successful dot com merchants investing more in their online websites, investing more in duplicating the experience of the store online."
Craig Berman, a vice-president with Amazon.com, said they're expecting their best year yet. "We are entering a world of perfect information- - where customers have incredible amounts of information right at their fingertips - whether it is a smartphone or a table computer. The customers are able to go wherever they may be and check prices, check sizes, check availability."
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How about your boss saying, you know, we need to get this project done before Friday so come into work and you can 'celebrate' Thanksgiving on your next day off.
Retail workers deserve a least a couple of days that they can count on being home with families. Apparently shoppers place their 'needs' above that of store workers..."
by AmazingGrce
amazinggrace, I used to have to work every Thanksgiving when I was in the restaurant industry. You'd be surprised how many people eat out that day. Anyway, I didn't mind it. I made a lot of money, and I saw my family that morning and the other 364 days of the year. Some people want to work that day. Not everybody takes the holiday as seriously as you do, or they can make up for it at Christmas, like police officers and others who also have no choice but to work.
The entire cycle with continue to spiral out of control unless communities return to modernized 'blue laws'. Communities, counties and states need to step in and identify those limited numbers of stores that can be open and products that can be sold on nationally recognized holidays. Yeah go ahead and scream about it but in reality that's the only way to 'fix' the problem.
This Black Friday phenomenon seems kinda crazy to me. Thanksgiving has always been a quiet day in our family, once dinner is over we take it easy the rest of the day. It's nice that way.
Last year my nieces and their boyfriends were reading all the Black Friday ads and planning all the stuff they were going to get. And, it was all for THEMSELVES, not for gifts. Seemed to me that Black Friday was mostly about being greedy, at least for those young people it was.
Oh well. I don't get it.
"This store is teeming with people who are excited to be here," said Storch. "It's a celebratory atmosphere. It's also just an incredible sea of humanity."
Does he also sell hip-high boots and shovels? That comment of his is so fake it's sickening to read and it's now up my knees... it's a sea of something, but it ain't humanity.
I'm sure all this helps "The Economy", whatever that has become. Maybe the working class, what's left anyway, are all using plastic... which makes sense, since wages haven't kept up and costs have risen, and the banks love it either way because they always get bailed out... and they always pass the savings right down to us, as the percentage rates as set by the Fed surely mean the customers get a nice 20% APR instead of 30%, right?
But all this is what the people want. I'm not going to complain anymore.
It doesn't do any good no one is listening.
Sorry but it is the truth.
If you read this then you will agree I may be the only one who heard you.
It doesn't do any good no one is listening.
Sorry but it is the truth.
If you read this then you will agree I may be the only one who heard you.
Would you work 9PM that night?
Some families are done by 6PM and have to go to night jobs. Others are done by 9PM and just want to get home, without having to deal with traffic that these sad trinket stores' being open only worsens.
Still, maybe I'm not seeing what the big deal is either. I must be a commie; there's profit in them thar hills, even if it's made out of plastic while the demand-side of our country loses opportunities for real money, real jobs, and other real things. Maybe plastic is all that's left.
There's something 2 be displeased about...
How about your boss saying, you know, we need to get this project done before Friday so come into work and you can 'celebrate' Thanksgiving on your next day off.
Retail workers deserve a least a couple of days that they can count on being home with families. Apparently shoppers place their 'needs' above that of store workers.
Take a look around retail stores these days. The employees are predominantly at the two extremes of age. The very young who have no work experience or low ambitions and the older workers looking for work to make it to or through their retirement years. This polarization is becoming more prevalent year by year. The few middle aged folks (30-50) you see are going to be management people who have chosen Retail work as their profession and they are whipsawed by their corporations into the schedules imposed on them. Unfortunately these managers are also often undertrained and unable 'manage' employees without the use of threats.
I have been in and out of the retail work world several times over my working life and I can tell you that forcing the employees to work on what should be a real holiday breeds an animosity that eventually will get paid back in terms of lower service to the customer and or complete disloyalty to the company. Retail workers are generally looking for a way out of the retail work world exactly for the reason that companies have always viewed and treated them like disposable silverware. Better treatment of retail workers will result in better customer service and fewer internal issues for the company. I've worked in the good, the bad and the ugly retails stores and the difference is mind boggling. You will always have the malcontents but when the employees are listened to and treated with respect the service to the customer rises remarkably.
Black Friday 'creep' will do more harm than good to the stores in the long run. With no defined sale start points customers will become more difficult to deal with and have more unreasonable expectations and employee quality will sink even lower.
And they say those of us against this form of excess are "communists", "socialists", or whatever...