Retailers coax Black Friday shoppers into stores with big discounts and giveaways

New York (AP): Retailers used giveaways and big discounts to reward U.S. shoppers who ventured out for Black Friday even as earlier offers, the prospect of better bargains in the days ahead and the ease of e-commerce drained much of the excitement from the holiday shopping season’s much-hyped kickoff.

Frequent deals throughout the month and more awaiting on Cyber Monday gave consumers less of a reason to squabble over store shelves while trying to get their hands on TVs or toys. But shopping malls and merchants big and small used the day after Thanksgiving to entice customers into physical stores at a time when many prefer to browse and buy online.

Some Target shoppers lined up as early as 11:30 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day to get their hands on an exclusive book devoted to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and a bonus edition of her “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology” album. Although both will be available purchase online starting Saturday, many locations sold out their supply of the products, the discount retailer said.

At a Target in Southfield, Michigan, a few miles north of Detroit, Marge Evans, 32, used her cellphone to take and send photos of shirts, sweaters and other apparel with Black Friday markdowns. Her shopping cart was full, but she was shopping for an upcoming cruise with her fiance, not Christmas.

“I’ll see what things are looking like the first week in January,” the 32-year-old massage therapist said. “Really, after the holidays are over is when the real deals come through. They get rid of everything.”

Industry analysts observed Black Friday shoppers displaying the same choosy, deal-driven behavior many U.S. consumers exhibited all year while adjusting prices after the period of inflation that started toward the end of the coronavirus pandemic.

At many stores, the huge crowds of Black Fridays past never returned after the pandemic. A Walmart in Germantown, Maryland, had only half of the parking spots filled on Friday morning. Some shoppers were returning items or buying groceries.

Bharatharaj Moruejsan, a 35-year-old software engineer, decided to check out Walmart’s offers because he was jet-lagged after returning from a month-long family vacation to India. He scored an iPad for his 1-year-old daughter for $250, 32% off its original $370 price tag.

“That’s a good deal,” Moruejsan said.

After visiting stores and shopping centers on Long Island, Marshal Cohen, chief retail adviser at market research firm Circana, said that apart from people lining up for Target’s Taylor Swift merchandise, the number of shoppers appeared typical.

“The spreading out of the holidays has created the lack of need and lack of urgency,” said Cohen, who had a 20-person team monitoring crowds nationwide. “This is going to be a long, slow tedious process” of getting shoppers to buy, he said.

Michael Brown, a partner at management consulting firm Kearney, saw no lines at the Westfield Garden State Plaza in Paramus, New Jersey, 10 minutes before the 7 a.m. opening.

“It’s not the old Black Friday that we used to know,” he said.