Black Friday Shoppers Off to an Early Start

While tens of thousands of shoppers will head to malls and stores in Los Angeles County Friday for what is considered the start of the Christmas shopping season, Black Friday sales continue to begin earlier and earlier.

“What’s happened most over the last five years is the acceleration of the beginning of Black Friday sales,” Lars Perner, an associate professor of clinical marketing at the USC Marshall School of Business, said in an interview posted on the school’s website.

“We’ve seen, for example, Amazon especially coming up with a lot of the early sales. That means competitors have to follow. When Amazon does something, then Walmart and many others will do the same, and the brick and mortar stores have to follow along. The arms race, so to speak, has begun earlier and earlier.

“There’s no limit to how far back you can get things. There used to be some cultural reaction to having sales too early, but increasingly people have come to expect it. Some people might philosophically bemoan it, but there’s not that same visceral reaction anymore.”

According to an annual survey released Nov. 14 by the National Retail Federation conducted by Prosper Insights & Analytics, 131.7 million nationwide plan to shop in stores or in person Friday, part of a record 183.4 million planning to shop between Thanksgiving and Monday, which is dubbed Cyber Monday because of discounts offered by online retailers.

The previous record was 182 million set in 2023.

The survey found 72% of holiday shoppers plan to shop in stores or online Friday, including 65% who plan to shop in stores.

The top reasons consumers plan to shop during this five-day period are because the deals are too good to pass up (57%), it is tradition (28%) and they like to start holiday shopping over Thanksgiving weekend (24%).

“Even though holiday shopping continues to pull forward, some of the busiest shopping days of the year are during the five-day Thanksgiving weekend,” said Katherine Cullen, vice president of industry and consumer insights for the National Retail Federation, which bills itself as the world’s largest retail trade association.

“Consumers are prioritizing gift-giving for the most important people in their lives, and retailers are prepared to help customers find everything on their shopping lists at great prices throughout the season.”

Most J.C. Penney stores will open at 5 a.m., and most Macy’s, Best Buy, Target, Dick’s Sporting Goods and The Home Depot at 6 a.m.

Target will begin exclusively selling “Taylor Swift The Eras Tour Book,” plus “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology” on CD and vinyl Friday. They will become available on the Target app and on Target.com Saturday.

The survey found that clothing or accessories continued to top the list of what people plan to buy during Christmas shopping at 54%, followed by gift cards (44%), toys (36%), books, video games and other media (31%) and food/candy (30%).

Legos and Hot Wheels were the top two toys shoppers told pollsters they planned to buy for boys for the third consecutive year. Cars were again third, followed by video games and the PlayStation video game system. Remote controlled cars were sixth, a year after tying Spider-Man-related items for eighth.

Video game consoles were seventh, Nerf products dropped one spot to eighth. Spider-Man-related items were ninth and trucks 10th.

The top two on the list for girls were the same for the third consecutive year — Barbie dolls and any doll. Legos were third for the second consecutive year after finishing fourth in 2022. Makeup and beauty products were fourth. Disney items were fifth and baby dolls sixth.

The Barbie Dreamhouse was seventh, a year after tying for ninth. Clothes were eighth, electronics ninth and Squishmallows plush toys were 10th, after finishing sixth in 2022 and eighth in 2023.

The survey of 8,135 adult consumers was conducted Nov. 1-7 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.1 percentage points.

Last Chance for Animals will conduct its 38th annual Black Friday Fur- Free Friday protest in Beverly Hills. While the sale of new fur products in California has been banned since Jan. 1, 2023, the group continues its protests on Rodeo Drive because there are fashion brands on the famed shopping street that have not adopted a fur-free policy and continue to sell fur online and outside of California in places where it is still legal.

Black Friday is also the 33rd annual “Buy Nothing Day,” conceived by Adbusters and billed by supporters as “a 24-hour detox from consumerism and an opportunity for you to tune into the impact we have on the environment through shopping.”

Adbusters describes itself as “a global network of activists, writers, artists, designers, hackers, tricksters, poets, philosophers and punks.”