Black Friday sales fall after retail giants' Thanksgiving opening

(Guardian UK) Thanksgiving shopping on Thursday took a noticeable bite out of Black Friday's start to the holiday season, as the latest survey found retail sales in stores fell slightly from last year. Saturday's report from retail technology company ShopperTrak estimated that consumers spent $11.2bn at stores across the US. That is down 1.8% from last year's total.

This year's Friday results appear to have been tempered by hundreds of thousands of shoppers hitting sales on Thursday evening. Retailers including Sears, Target and Walmart got their deals rolling as early as 8pm on Thursday. Online shopping also may have cut into the take at brick-and-mortar stores: IBM said online sales rose 17.4% on Thanksgiving and 20.7% on Black Friday, compared with 2011.

However, ShopperTrak said retail foot traffic increased 3.5%, to more than 307.67 million store visits, indicating that at least some shoppers were browsing but not spending freely.

"Black Friday continues to be an important day in retail," said ShopperTrak's founder, Bill Martin. "This year, though, more retailers than last year began their door-buster deals on Thursday, Thanksgiving itself. So while foot traffic did increase on Friday, those Thursday deals attracted some of the spending that's usually meant for Friday." ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/nov/25/black-friday-sales-fall-thanksgiving-opening