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Black Friday wasn't as disastrous as many feared (except, of course, for the poor Wal-Mart employee trampled to death by impatient shoppers).
As far as sales go, overall, the retail industry did get a slight boost. The National Retail Federation counted 172 million shoppers visiting Web sites and brick-and-mortar stores between Thanksgiving and the following Sunday, which is up from 147 million last year. In total, the NRF expects holiday sales to rise 2.2 percent this year to $470.4 billion.
But it's tough to say whether today, known as Cyber Monday, will prove as promising for retailers. In fact, this has been one of the hardest holiday sales seasons to predict in years, according to retail analysts, since the current economic recession is wreaking havoc on consumer confidence.
Cyber Monday is traditionally the day online retailers push as the best day for holiday deals. So far, analysts are mixed as to what to expect when the last order is placed at midnight tonight.
"We certainly saw Black Friday had some surprising bright spots. But we saw buying start to fall off Saturday and Sunday," said John Squire, chief strategy officer for online retail tracking service Coremetrics. "We're going to hesitate in suggesting Cyber Monday will be as shiny as Black Friday."
Early Monday, traffic to the retail Web sites his company follows and the number of orders placed or started were down 10 percent compared with the same time last year, Squire said. Of course, he cautioned, the day is not over. The final tally won't be ready until Tuesday.
Cyber Monday has typically proved to be an accurate measure of the overall shopping season, according to ComScore. Though individual year-over-year growth rates for online spending each day varies throughout the holiday sales season, during the past few years Cyber Monday has been within a few percentage points of the final holiday season growth rate.
But many people have already done their shopping online. ComScore on Sunday reported that online, nontravel retail sales on the Friday after Thanksgiving reached $534 million. That's up from the same day a year ago, but just barely--online retail sales rose just 1 percent, from $531 million.
So will online shoppers come out again and respond to the aggressive deals being offered today? Again, it's tough to say due to the volatile economy, and the competing influences on consumer spending, Gian Fulgoni, chairman of ComScore, said in a statement.
But even if Cyber Monday doesn't bring in the sales retailers were hoping for, all is not lost. Typically, while the Monday after Thanksgiving produces the first sales spike for online sales, it's not the biggest spike.
That will likely be two weeks from today, Monday, December 15, according to Ken Cassar, an analyst with Nielsen Online.
For the past three years, the third Monday following Thanksgiving was the function of two factors. "It's a Monday, and Mondays are the most heavily trafficked days of the week as people get back to work. And it's the Monday that's closest to Christmas without being dangerously close as far as shipping goes," he said.
Overall, the calendar could actually be the industry's ally for the rest of this year.
Though Thanksgiving was later this year, Christmas will fall on a Thursday, which gives consumers two more days of online shopping with guaranteed shipping this year than last, when Christmas was on a Tuesday.
Because of that, Squire of Coremetrics says that in addition to December 15, the following Tuesday and Wednesday will be big days too, since those often offer the last chance for free shipping from retailers.
"That's usually the last big spike of online buying," he said. "Expectations are we'll see that again."
But how big of a spike is relative. Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com, said Black Friday provided a welcome bump in sales from what had been shaping up to be a "weak" November for his company. But Cyber Monday and beyond should be better.
At Overstock.com, Byrne said, "We'll be happy if we end up anywhere near zero percent growth."
Update 2:03 p.m. PST: Added NPD and Apple paragraphs.
Black Friday proved to be a relatively bright light in an economy largely characterized by dark, gloomy reports.
Overall, retail sales for the day after Thanksgiving were up 3 percent from the same day in 2007, with preliminary estimates putting total sales in the U.S. at $10.6 billion, according to Shoppertrak RCT. (Shoppertrak derives its retail benchmark from a wide range of categories, including consumer electronics, sporting goods, apparel, and general merchandise.)
On Black Friday, the Wii had the right touch.
(Credit: GameSpot)Web shopping saw an even larger percentage gain for the day, with traffic up 11 percent year over year, per comparison shopping site PriceGrabber.com.
Taking the crown as the top product of the day was the Nintendo Wii, according to both PriceGrabber and online commerce giant eBay, which pulled data from its namesake site and other eBay-owned sites including PayPal and Shopping.com.
The Wii game console was the most searched-for product on eBay, followed by the Wii Fit companion product. Consumers snatched up 3,171 Wiis over eBay, at an average selling price of $349, followed by the Wii Fit, with 1,059 sold at an average selling price of $140.
Market watchers pointed out that, in the dire economy of 2008, online shoppers and consumers generally were likely motivated by widespread discounting by anxious sellers.
"Consumers are responding to aggressive promotions and price drops on popular electronics," Ron LaPierre, president of PriceGrabber, said in a statement.
The NPD Group offered a similar assessment from the retail front lines on Friday:
The overall initial conclusion for Black Friday is that sales and traffic were strong, likely on par with prior years. Consumers were drawn by the appearance of bargains and low prices and electronics are increasingly the primary driver of consumers' interest in Black Friday shopping.
According to PriceGrabber, the following were the most popular products on Black Friday--nine of the 10 are gadgets, with the odd product out being one styling of the popular Ugg boots:
• Nintendo Wii console
• Ugg Australia "classic short" boot
• Sony BDP-S350 1080p Blu-ray disc player
• Samsung LN52A650 52" LCD TV
• Nintendo Wii Fit
• Panasonic TH-42PX80U 42" plasma TV
• Sennheiser HD 555 headphones
• Canon EOS Rebel XSi Black SLR digital camera kit
• Acer Aspire One AOA110-1295 notebook PC
• Canon PowerShot A590 IS black digital camera
The consumer electronics category that saw the largest gains from Black Friday 2007 was Blu-ray/HD-DVD players, up 147 percent, according to PriceGrabber. Headphones were up 103 percent. (By comparison, women's sleep and lounge wear was up 415 percent, women's boots were up 203 percent, and watches were up 202 percent.)
On eBay's Shopping.com, a GPS sold every 9 minutes and an MP3 player every 11 minutes. On eBay proper, the hottest products in those categories were the Garmin Nuvi GPS and the iPod Touch music player.
Apple seemed to have had a good Black Friday. Fortune's Apple 2.0 blog reported Sunday that on Amazon.com, 10 of the 25 bestselling electronics products (including three of the top 10) were Apple products, led by the iPod Touch. The Fortune report also said that by Sunday the iPod Touch had fallen to No. 4, with Amazon's own Kindle moving into first.
Despite the good returns from Black Friday, no one seemed eager to predict continued economic cheer through the rest of the holiday season.
"While this is an encouraging start for retailers, there's no guarantee these deep discounts will continue after Black Friday weekend, which could slow spending," Bill Martin, co-founder of ShopperTrak, said in a statement. "Additionally, consumers have just 27 days to shop this year as opposed to 32 in 2007, which may catch some procrastinating consumers off guard, leading to lower sales levels."
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Update, Monday 7:08 a.m. PST: Added information on Wal-Mart's Black Friday deals.
Usually Black Friday is a good time of year for consumers and retailers. It's when retailers get "in the black" by getting rid of a lot of excess inventory through offering drastic discounts.
This year is different. The economy has crumbled, consumers plan on spending less, and at least for those shopping for electronics, there are fewer viable options with many Circuit City stores set to close.
Some bargain hunters have complained that, so far, they haven't seen as many great deals as they're used to this time of year as the circular Black Friday ads for major retailers get leaked ahead of time.
CNET News caught up with some retail and Black Friday specialists to ask them if and where good deals can be found this season.
For electronics, the best deals may not be found at the Best Buys and Wal-Marts of the world this year, says Daniel de Grandpre, CEO of Dealnews, a bargain-tracking site. He recommends regional competitors to the international chains. "Look towards MicroCenter, Fry's Electronics, Meijer, and others for better Black Friday deals. MicroCenter's weekend sale has some outstanding deals."
There will also be great deals on the Web. Not just online-only retailers like Newegg.com and Amazon.com, but the Web sites of your favorite stores, too. All major retailers with Web stores maintain different inventories for their brick-and-mortar and online outlets, and will try to entice customers with "Web only" discounts.
A lot more sites will be enticing consumers with offers of free shipping this year. "Free shipping will be prevalent," as will specials on gift cards or offers of no sales tax, according to John Squire, chief strategy officer for Coremetrics, which tracks online retail sales. Also look for more online coupons and "minimum basket values," which are free goods or other enticements if you spend a certain amount of money.
Despite all of this, uncertainty is rampant among retailers.
"In the past, these things were a lot easier to predict than this year," said Squire of Coremetrics. In years past, holiday sales were generally up 20 percent on Black Friday and the following Monday, and the top sales day has been easy to pinpoint as December 9.
"But since the drop of the stock market and complete falloff in consumer spending in October...it's hard to give distinct numbers for Black Friday or Cyber Monday this year."
But that doesn't mean holiday discounts won't be as generous this year. Dealnews' de Grandpre says being less aggressive on prices this year would be a risky strategy.
"Shoppers are savvier than ever. They have access to far more information than ever," by doing advance comparison shopping with Black Friday tracking sites, he said. "If a retailer doesn't offer a suitable 'doorbuster' to drive traffic to its stores, buyers will look for someone else who does."
Some retailers are doing Black Friday month specials, rather than confining their deep discounts to just the day following Thanksgiving.
Black Friday "is the best single day for bargains, without question. However, there are Black Friday-like deals happening now," according to de Grandpre. "(Beginning in October), we've already seen a Blu-ray player for $170 with $70 in free Blu-ray movies--akin to getting the player for $100. We've also seen a 42-inch 720p LCD HDTV for $600, and a Kingston 32GB USB Flash Drive for $30, both with free shipping."
Kmart, for example, officially started offering "Early Black Friday" deals on November 2 (registration required), in an attempt to entice buyers who are expected to be more conservative about their spending this holiday.
Still, the long Thanksgiving weekend is a key one for retailers looking to lure consumers in droves. On Monday, for instance, Wal-Mart touted its "three days of Black Friday," which it's kicking off with online deals starting Thursday ahead of in-store offerings Friday and Saturday.
The Consumer Electronics Association says consumers it's polled this year plan to spend $200 less on the holidays, and retailers were bracing early for reduced demand this season.
Clearly, buying will be down across the board for the holiday season, said Squire of CoreMetrics. The key is retailers being able to deliver the right mix of merchandise that price-conscious consumers want.
"For merchandisers that have a broad selection, and ones they can change around, they're going to do really well," he said. "Those that have erred on the side of luxury goods will struggle."
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