Black Friday creep is more than Thanksgiving Day store openings

Black Friday is turning from a sprint into a marathon.
If you’re planning to do Christmas shopping after Thanksgiving, your favorite doorbuster hour may have moved, in some cases to Thanksgiving Day.
Wal-Mart, Toys R Us and Sears are opening at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving. Target follows at 9 p.m., and regional malls and outlet centers will be open at midnight, along with Macy’s, Kohl’s and Best Buy.
But that’s not all that’s new, analysts said. Black Friday has enveloped the whole week and in some cases the whole month of November. More huge discounts are coming on Cyber Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving.
“Black Friday has changed from a moment in time to a big chunk in time,” said AlixPartners managing director Joel Bines.
And then he goes one step further: “I don’t think Black Friday exists anymore.”
Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday “are all bleeding together with front-loaded online deals,” said Edward J. Fox, a Southern Methodist University business professor.
Amazon.com started Black Friday deals on Monday, and Walmart.com has been running a “big pre-Black Friday” sale since then, too. Target.com has started its “beat the rush sale” with coupons for 25 percent off branded toys. Toys R Us was offering 20 percent off one regular-priced item all week.
“Friends and family discounts of 20 to 40 percent off have been flooding emails since the beginning of November,” said BIGinsight consumer insights director Pam Goodfellow. “How much more can I buy at the Gap for 40 percent off?”
It shouldn’t be surprising that Deloitte found that half of Americans have already started their Christmas shopping. Even the National Retail Federation has forecast that slightly fewer shoppers will be out over the long Thanksgiving weekend, the traditional start of holiday shopping.
This 32-day holiday season should still be good for retailers, analysts say. Most forecasts call for sales in the November-December period to rise in the 3 percent to 4 percent range. That’s slightly lower than last year’s 5.1 percent increase.

New facets

But the season has taken a new shape that includes price matching, Black Friday discounts online, apps that check prices, smartphones with Internet access and more consumers comfortable with the new shopping tools.
“Brick-and-mortar retailers are fighting back with the Internet encroaching on Black Friday business. Why wait?” Bines said.
Macy’s, J.C. Penney and others will let you shop their Black Friday specials online on Thursday.
This year more stores, including Wal-Mart, offered layaway, which is “an incentive mechanism to get shoppers to commit early, to spend earlier in the cycle,” Fox said.
Retailers are making more promises this year as well, from price matches to guarantees. Price matching removes some urgency from Black Friday, Fox said.
For the first time, Best Buy has offered to match prices of online competitors. The offer is not in effect this week, but it will resume Tuesday and continue through Dec. 24.
“This week is excluded because there are so many crazy deals it wasn’t realistic for us to match. And we have great prices this week anyway,” said Best Buy spokesman Jeff Haydock.
This year, Wal-Mart decided to guarantee its own consumer electronics doorbuster deals. Everyone waiting in line on Black Friday for three specific items — a 32-inch LCD TV, an Apple iPad 2 and a Blu-ray player — will get them by Christmas. If the store runs out, shoppers can pay for the items and get them delivered.
“Wal-Mart took the scarcity out of Black Friday when they said we’ll guarantee our hottest items,” Bines said. “They’ve taken the moment of running the marathon away. Now it’s more like the rolling admissions process for college.”

Battling websites

Thursday openings are another way brick-and-mortar retailers compete with websites, said Jason Buechel of Accenture’s retail practice.
“There’s a customer out there that won’t go out early in the morning, but they’re willing to go out a couple of hours on Thursday night,” he said.
There’s been some backlash that retailers are invading Thanksgiving family time, but 17 percent of Americans say they plan to shop the new hours, according to a survey released Tuesday by the International Council of Shopping Centers and Goldman Sachs.
That’s 41 million people who say they’ll shop on Thanksgiving Day this year.
Retail analysts are anxious to see how all the changes go over with shoppers. “This season has so much to study,” Beuchel said.
Follow Maria Halkias on Twitter @MariaHalkias.

AT A GLANCE: Store openings

THANKSGIVING
All day: Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic will be open at the Galleria and other locations in the area.
8 p.m.: Wal-Mart stores are always open on Thanksgiving, but the doorbusters start at 8 p.m.: with another batch at 10 p.m. and one more at 5 a.m.
8 p.m.: Toys R Us and Sears open.
9 p.m.: Target opens.
9 p.m.: Allen Premium Outlets opens at midnight but some stores will open as early as 9.
10 p.m.: Paragon Outlets Grand Prairie opens.
Midnight: Kohl’s, Macy’s and Best Buy open.
Midnight: Collin Creek in Plano, Town East Mall in Mesquite, Vista Ridge in Lewisville, Grapevine Mills, Firewheel Town Center in Garland, Irving Mall, North East Mall in Hurst and The Shops at Park Lane open.
BLACK FRIDAY
6 a.m.: J.C. Penney opens.
6 a.m.: Stonebriar Centre in Frisco opens.
7 a.m.: The Shops at Willow Bend opens.
8 a.m.: Galleria Dallas opens.
9 a.m.: NorthPark opens.