Retailers have a robust start to holiday season

ANNE D’INNOCENZIO

AP Retail Writer

More Amer­i­cans hunted for bar­gains over the week­end than ever before as retail­ers lured them online and into stores with big dis­counts and an earlier-than-usual start to the hol­i­day shop­ping season.

A record 226 mil­lion shop­pers vis­ited stores and web­sites dur­ing the four-day hol­i­day week­end start­ing on Thanks­giv­ing Day, up from 212 mil­lion last year, accord­ing to early esti­mates by The National Retail Fed­er­a­tion released on Sun­day. Amer­i­cans spent more, too: The aver­age hol­i­day shop­per spent $398.62 over the week­end, up from $365.34 a year ago.

Art and Anna Destrada from Port Chester, N. Y., were among the hol­i­day shop­pers. They started shop­ping on Thanks­giv­ing evening at a Wal­mart store, went to var­i­ous malls in New Jer­sey on Fri­day, and got some deals at Macy’s on Sat­ur­day. They spent a total of $2,000 on gifts for them­selves and oth­ers, includ­ing a Wii videogame con­sole, cloth­ing and jewelry.

“We’ve saved for Christ­mas and put away money all year,” says Anna Destrada, 49. “We stayed within our means so we can make a few splurges.”

The results for the first hol­i­day shop­ping week­end show that retail­ers’ efforts to lure shop­pers dur­ing the weak econ­omy are work­ing. Some like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and J.C. Pen­ney have been mak­ing a stronger push online to bet­ter com­pete with the likes of rival Amazon.com. And major chains like Macy’s, Tar­get, Best Buy extended the tra­di­tional start to the shop­ping sea­son by open­ing their doors at mid­night on Thanks­giv­ing evening instead of the pre-dawn Fri­day hours of years past.

But the ques­tion remains whether retail­ers’ will be able to hold shop­pers’ atten­tion through­out the remain­der of the sea­son, which can account for 25 to 40 per­cent of a merchant’s annual rev­enue. After all, Amer­i­cans are still very dri­ven by deep dis­count­ing and they’re more con­scious of their spend­ing budgets.

Over­all, hol­i­day spend­ing is expected to grow by a mod­est 2.8 per­cent to about $466 bil­lion, accord­ing to the NRF. A fuller pic­ture on spend­ing will come Thurs­day when major retail­ers report their Novem­ber sales fig­ures. But for now, experts agree that retail­ers will likely have to con­tinue to dis­count to get shop­pers to spend.

“The big ques­tion is: How do you close the sea­son?” says Hana Ben-Shabat, a part­ner at A. T. Kearney’s retail prac­tice. “This is a very pro­mo­tional dri­ven shopper.”

Indeed, the ear­lier hours — which meant ear­lier door-buster deals — on Black Fri­day seemed to be what drew many shop­pers in over the week­end, par­tic­u­larly the younger crowd.

Accord­ing to the National Retail Fed­er­a­tion, 24 per­cent of Black Fri­day shop­pers were at stores at mid­night. That’s up from 9.5 per­cent the year before when only a few stores were open dur­ing that time. Of those shop­ping at mid­night on Black Fri­day, 37 per­cent were in the 18-to-34 age group.

“Black Fri­day has evolved from an early morn­ing shop­ping activ­ity to a late night enter­tain­ment,” says Ellen Davis, spokes­woman at The National Retail Fed­er­a­tion. “A lot of peo­ple stayed up until 1 a.m. or 2 a.m. to go shop­ping, and then went to bed.”

The remain­der of the day went well, too.

Mall of Amer­ica, the nation’s largest mall, broke its Black Fri­day record with about 210,000 shop­pers. And Taub­man Cen­ters, which man­ages or leases 26 shop­ping cen­ters in 13 states, says sales were up any­where from mid– to low dou­ble dig­its on Fri­day, com­pared with a year ago.

Over­all, Black Fri­day sales were $11.4 bil­lion, up 7 per­cent, or nearly $1 bil­lion from the same day last year, accord­ing to a report by Shop­per­Trak, which gath­ers data from 25,000 out­lets across the coun­try. It was the largest amount ever spent on that day and the biggest year-over-year increase since 2007. Addi­tion­ally, cus­tomer counts climbed 5.1 per­cent that day com­pared with a year ago.

Online shop­ping on Black Fri­day was espe­cially strong. Research firm com­Score reported on Sun­day that online spend­ing jumped 26 per­cent on Black Fri­day to $816 mil­lion, com­pared with $648 mil­lion on the same day a year ago.

Some experts worry the strong start will can­ni­bal­ize sales dur­ing the remain­der of the sea­son. Indeed, many peo­ple who headed to the malls after Black Fri­day weren’t spending.

At the Crab­tree Val­ley Mall in Raleigh, N.C., it was busy on Sat­ur­day, but many shop­pers did not have bags. Like­wise, at Pio­neer Place mall in Port­land, Ore., on Sat­ur­day, a num­ber of shop­pers were doing more window-shopping for the best deals than actual buying.

David Van Veen, 25, for one, says he was look­ing for deals on work clothes. But he says he’ll likely wait to get gifts and other hol­i­day items — per­haps when the deals are bet­ter — later in the season.

“I’ll wait until Dec. 23 to start shop­ping I think,” he says.

Posted by AP News on Nov 27 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.