For fearless cash-conscious consumers, Black Friday is one of the most important days of the years. Lucky for them, this shop-til-you-drop day is next week and stores are gearing up for the rush.
Walmart plans to open many of its stores on midnight the day after Thanksgiving (basically, Thanksgiving night for those of us who aren’t in a turkey comatose). NPR reports, “Walmart will offer discounts on a wide range of items from toys to clothing, including $9 Wrangler jeans and $15 Lego tubs. The company’s big electronics sale will start at 5 a.m. Friday, featuring $298 15.6-inch HP Laptops, $198 Emerson 32-inch LCD HDTV TVs and $59 Kodak Digital cameras.”
Walmart isn’t the only store modifying its schedule to accommodate holiday shoppers. For the first time ever, Sears and Kmart will open their doors on Thanksgiving Day itself. Toys R Us will be open on T-day too. It looks like it’s more like Black weekend, not just Black Friday.
Businesspundit.com reported that last year 195 million shoppers flocked to the stores spending an average of $343.31 each for a grand total of $41.2 billion dollars spent all weekend. While this sounds like an astronomical amount of money, that figure was actually lower then the amount consumers spent in 2008. In ’08 shoppers spent $372.57.
Economists are hoping that with the recession technically over and the stock market climbing, consumers will be out in full-force this year. Walletpop.com says, “The National Retail Federation (NRF) predicts sales growth of 2.3 percent for November and December starting on Black Friday.”
If the predictions ring true and the forecasted outcomes are at least met, it’ll be a key sign that our economy’s bouncing back. Looks like 2011 is going to be a great year.
Image courtesy of Lars Ploughmann at flickr.