Wal-Mart to Start Black Friday Sales From Thursday

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE:WMT), one of the leading retail chains in the United States decided to follow the nationwide trend set by many retail chains by throwing the stores open for an early thanksgiving sale.

The Thanksgiving sales, better known as Black Friday marks the beginning of the holiday shopping season and the retails open their shops early on the Thanksgiving offering promotional sales and discounts.

Target Corporation (NYSE:TGT) along with other retail chains have recently announced that their outlets will be opened at midnight on Black Friday. In response to this move by its competitors, Wal-Mart said that it is going to kick off its Black Friday deals at 10p.m. on Thursday itself.

Companies which have announced midnight openings include Best Buy Co. Inc. (NYSE:BBY), Macy’s Inc. (NYSE:M) and Kohl’s Corporation (NYSE:KSS)

Wal-Mart’s chief merchandising officer for the United States, Duncan Mac Naughton said that the retail chain has decided to hold special events on thanks giving and Black Friday after the customers told that they would rather stay up late shopping than waking up early to shop.

Wal-Mart said that it will start selling clothes, toys and home accessories at marked down prices from 10 p.m. on Thursday. The customers can take advantage of the doorbuster deals on these merchandises and buy Barbies for $5 instead of the marked price of $19, jeans for less than $10, pajamas set for children at $4.47 and Black & Decker Coffeemaker for $9.44.

According to Wal-Mart, it will start discounting the electronic goods at midnight and as a part of the Black Friday deal Samsung 51 inch plasma television will be available for $498 instead of $649, Magellan GPS at $69 instead of 89 and Kodak 14 megapixel camera at $49. Wal-Mart will go ahead with anoter round of discounting from8 a.m. which will continue through the weekend and this deal will allow customers to buy Goodyear tires at $59 and onwards, HDTVs for $598 and DVD selections for $1.96 each.

Wal-Mart has also announced various additional incentives for shoppers which includes price matching which will go on until December 15, free shipping for goods bought on Wal-Mart.com, zero interest on Wal-Mart credit card purchases if paid for in full within six months and a 10 cent discount per gallon of gas bought at participating Wal-Mart or Murphy USA.

Black Friday sales in the previous year totaled to $11.8 billion as per the data available and this year’s sales is expected to increase by less than 1.2 percent.

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.