This year, Black Friday ads indicate that it won’t be so much about getting up early to head to the stores for the Black Friday deals as rushing out the door as you are still chewing the last bit of turkey. Consider this year “dine and dash,” as many are calling it. Black Friday deals are starting as early as 8 pm on Thanksgiving.
I’m not a big Black Friday shopper. I prefer to get most, if not all, of my shopping done before Thanksgiving. This way I can enjoy more time spent with the family, baking cookies, playing games, reading Christmas books to the kids, taking part in community Christmas activities, etc.
Years ago, I did enjoy Black Friday. On Thanksgiving day, my sister-in-laws and I might pour over the lists of deals (there were no full-color ads then, just line by line lists when the Black Friday deals were really a secret, and people had to work together to spy them all out) and circle anything we didn’t want to miss. The opening times weren’t ridiculous, either. We could get to a store at 7 am, and still be assured that we would get most of our deals.
The ways things are now, it just isn’t fun for me anymore. Apparently, though, I may be alone. The numbers of people coming out earlier and earlier are greater and greater. According to the National Retail Federation, 24 percent of shoppers were at the stores shopping by Midnight on Thanksgiving Eve/Black Friday last year. Two years earlier, that number was nine percent. Stores that open the earliest see an average increase in sales of 22 percent. If you open it, they will come.
Last year, Sears opened at Midnight. This year, it opens at 8pm on Thanksgiving; so does Walmart. Kmart opens at 6 am on Thanksgiving, closes at 4 pm and then reopens at 8 pm. Wow. Four whole hours for its employees to enjoy Thanksgiving before having to get back to work. They close again at 3 am on Black Friday, and then reopen at 5 am. Expect staggered deals throughout the day, which means that you could spend all day shopping, bouncing from store to store, if you want the deals.
Related Articles:
Sorry Junior, the Economy is Hurting
2012 Black Friday Opening Times Released!
What Will Black Friday 2012 Be Like?