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Retailers Woo Shoppers with Discounts on Black Friday

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Shopping season in the U.S. is well underway, with retailers wooing shoppers with huge discounts and longer opening hours on the most anticipated shopping day of the year. Retailers such as Gap Inc. (NYSE: GPS) offered big discounts to shoppers on Black Friday. A number of retailers saw huge lines of shoppers waiting for the stores to be opened on the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday. Macy’s (NYSE: M) saw 9,000 people waiting outside its flagship store in New York City on Thursday night.

Although the openings were peaceful, authorities in Los Angeles said that 20 people at a Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) store suffered minor injuries after a woman used pepper spray.  Some protests were planned in Chicago and Washington DC to get people to reconsider shopping at national chains on Black Friday. However, this did not have any major impact as shoppers flocked to stores to avail big discounts.


This year retailers opened stores even earlier on hopes that it will make Black Friday shopping more convenient. Black Friday marks the start of the crucial holiday season for retailers. Holiday season sales account for 25% to 40% of annual revenue for retailers. This year shoppers are expected to spend close to $500 billion during the holiday season, which is reasonable considering that U.S. economy is still weak due to a still recovering housing market and high unemployment.

According to International Council of Shopping Centers, 34% of consumers planned to shop on Black Friday, compared with 31% in 2010. The weekend could see as many as 152 million out for shopping, compared with 138 million in 2010.

A lot more retailers opened at midnight this year to lure shoppers, compared with last year. However, it is the discounts and not the longer hours that are driving shoppers to stores.

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edliston
Post Written By: Ed Liston

Ed Liston is a senior contributing editor at TheStockMarketWatch.com. An active market watcher and investor, Ed guides an independent team of experienced analysts and writes for multiple stock trader publications. He is widely quoted in various financial publications on the Internet. When Ed is not writing about stocks, investing in stocks, talking about stocks, or otherwise doing something stock related, he likes to go sailing and fishing in his yacht.


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Ed Liston

Ed Liston is a senior contributing editor at TheStockMarketWatch.com. An active market watcher and investor, Ed guides an independent team of experienced analysts and writes for multiple stock trader publications. He is widely quoted in various financial publications on the Internet. When Ed is not writing about stocks, investing in stocks, talking about stocks, or otherwise doing something stock related, he likes to go sailing and fishing.

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