Shoppers out looking for deals on Black Friday

Perhaps one of the most significant pieces of related news is Mall of America’s announcement made by management this past fall that it would not mandate retailers remain open on Thanksgiving Day.

She also downloaded apps for the major stores and was searching for the best deals, such as the heating blanket she chose to buy at Kohl’s over JC Penney. The stores still had a lot of Black Friday sales but, she missed the frenzy of the traditional early-morning Black Friday shopping.

Black Friday can be a really long day for the die-hard shopper, with many retailers opening at 5 a.m. or even earlier to droves of people anxiously waiting outside. Best Buy chief executive Hubert Joly asked on a conference call last week. That excludes auto sales, gas and restaurant receipts, but includes online spending and other non-store sales such as catalog spending. Adobe expects Black Friday to be the first day in retail history to exceed $1 billion in mobile revenue.

Amazon said it’s on pace to surpass last year’s Black Friday in terms of the number of items ordered.

Julie Singewald’s Black Friday started at 4 a.m.at a Twin Cities outlet mall.

Giant firm like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. have been heavily wooing online shoppers and investing extra cash in online sales, in the meantime Amazon.com Inc. started its transactions on November 1. How the change in the marketplace affects the debate over free trade will surely become a topic as the new Republican administration begins work in 2017. Now, it takes place on the day following Thanksgiving – the day you know as Black Friday – and it is billed as the way for consumers to “participate by not participating”.

This weekend is crucial to set the tone for the holiday season. “I’m a Nintendo kid”, she said.

But its popularity has been on the wane given the emergence of online shopping and cheap deals through the year from retailers including e-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc. But she said many online deals sell out quickly, so the best option is to head to the brick-and-mortar stores.

“(Friday) morning we hit the mall before 6 a.m. “I think they ought to give everyone a whole day with their families”, she said.

However, some store managers say they expected this because their online sales are growing. Amazon said Black Friday would surpass past year in terms of the number of items ordered on its website.

Most of these initiatives come at a cost, though retailers see them as long-term investments as they seek to build their online link to customers. Macy’s dropped it a year ago, and Lundgren said Friday there are no plans to bring it back. When she and friend Sanjana Mahesh headed out at 5 a.m. on the hunt for Converse sneakers, Kannan had already been perusing deals online for almost two hours.

The holiday shopping season, which runs through Christmas on December 25, can account for as much as 40 percent of retailers’ annual sales.

Among those hoping for a big shopping weekend are hundreds of small businesses in the area looking forward to Small Business Saturday.

Wal-Mart rival Target also ramped up its digital efforts, on Wednesday offering shoppers pre-sale Black Friday deals on its popular Cartwheel mobile application.