Early-bird bargain-hunters scooped up "Black Friday" deals on everything from TVs to toys across the United States, but many said discounts were not as deep as those offered last year.
As retailers look for the best holiday season in three years, deals that are less generous could bode well for their margins. Early anecdotal indications were that people were buying, not just looking.
"I'm looking at the TV and it says save $70 and I'm like, come on, you've got to be kidding," said Sanjay Patil as he and other shoppers waited outside a Best Buy Co Inc store in Princeton, New Jersey, before midnight, even though the electronics retailer didn't open until 5 a.m.
"If it's Black Friday, it has to be 100 or 120 bucks savings minimum," he said.
The National Retail Federation forecast that up to 138 mln people would go to stores this weekend. The industry trade group also forecast a 2.3% increase in sales during November and December, up from a 0.4% rise a year earlier. Other forecasts call for even greater increases.browse," Wall Street Strategies analyst Brian Sozzi said in an email message.
While some stores were open Thursday and many retailers have offered Black Friday deals for weeks, shoppers still lined up late Thursday and early Friday for the annual day-after-Thanksgiving bargain hunt.
"We've been up since 8 a.m. Thursday," Krystal Mercer, a Charlotte, North Carolina, city employee, said as she shopped at a Wal-Mart store. "By the time you want to sleep Thursday night, you start getting excited about the stores opening early Friday. The adrenaline just gets going."
Black Friday is a term adopted by retailers to refer to the time of year when their businesses move into the black, or turn a profit. This year their aim is expected to be about keeping sales momentum that has picked up modestly this year as the economy recovers.
Nandini Ramkissoon, 19, staked out a spot near the stacks of $69 Blu-ray Disc players and $198 HDTVs hours before they went on sale at 5 a.m. at a Wal-Mart in Secaucus, New Jersey.
"Wal-Mart is pretty good because they're letting their customers inside before time, and it's really cool," Ramkissoon said.
Wal-Mart opened many of its U.S. discount stores on Thanksgiving Day and the doors stayed open overnight, a tactic the company adopted after an employee was trampled to death by frantic shoppers two years ago on Black Friday.
READY TO SHOP
Consumers, whose spending accounts for about 70% of the U.S. economy, appeared to be in the mood to shop. On Wednesday, the government reported a 0.3% increase in personal spending in October compared with September.
Other signs that the economy might be gaining steam include a two-year low in a closely watched measure of jobless benefits.
"I'm spending more this year than last year," said George Lum, a 30-year-old hospital worker, as he sat in a lawn chair outside a Target Corp store in Princeton, more than four hours before its 4 a.m. opening. He was hoping to buy a 40-inch Westinghouse flatscreen LCD high-definition TV for $298.
About 200 shoppers were lined up waiting to pay for their purchases at the Toys R Us store in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, early Friday. Christine Barron had boxes piled over her head after shopping for her two-year-old son David.
"I wanted to be one of the first in line, but when I got here the line was already wrapped around the side of the building," Barron said.
Many retail stocks have rallied on investor hopes that the holiday season will be even better than expected. The Standard & Poor's retailing index rose 2.6% on Wednesday to its highest close in more than three years.
But that could also leave stocks vulnerable to a sell-off if sales and profits do not meet those heightened expectations, said Sozzi.
Despite the hoopla over Black Friday, there are still four more weeks until Christmas, and with consumers showing a tendency to do much of their shopping at the last minute, analysts say Black Friday is not a strong predictor for the season as a whole.
Nevertheless, some shoppers were planning to put in a hard day of buying on Friday.
After Wal-Mart, Ramkissoon said her family plans to spend the day at Sears and other stores before returning home to Brooklyn.
"It's like a whole day with no sleep," she said.
