Black Friday a family tradition for most

“I think Thanksgiving should be just for family and the unity and not to shop”.

As in the past few years, earlier opening times on Thanksgiving pulled Black Friday sales forward a day.

According to a press release from Target, the chain department store saw record-setting online sales and strong in-store sales nationwide this week. It forecast online spending would jump 32 percent to 1.1 billion pounds.

The mother-daughter team said they have been Black Friday shopping together for almost 15 years and planned to meet other relatives for more shopping later in the evening.

At Jersey City’s Newport Centre Mall, Joan Miller, 42, of Jersey City, took a break at 10:30 a.m. after shopping for about four hours with her family, sitting down surrounded by eight bags from retailers including Sears, Kohl’s and Victoria’s Secret. Thrilled to save some money, Johnson said she could never be one of the Black Friday diehards who camp out overnight waiting for a store to open. A Bloomington police officer kept watch near the entrance as shoppers scurried into the store to scour the shelves.

British retailers are anxious to avoid a repeat of last year’s trading pattern when the surge in lower-margin sales was followed by disappointing demand as shoppers held back in the hope of further discounts. “It is wonderful. I save so much”, said Carol Golden.

ComScore predicts that mobile will account for most of the growth in e-commerce holiday shopping this year, although starting from a significantly smaller base than desktop sales.

Adobe said that its $2.72 billion in estimated spend online on Black Friday showed growth of 14%.

Warten said he was pleased with his shopping spree. She said customers who found the online store had sold out were coming into the store to find hard-to-get items. Deborah Weinswig of the Fung Business Intelligence Center says in a recent report that prices of what the company considers the top 20 expected toys was almost 36 percent higher than a year ago, with the average price of $64.99.

But sometimes retailers lose when customers go online.

Amazon.com has enabled over 5,000 Indian vendors on its platform to hawk their products in the USA market during the period.

The day after Thanksgiving has traditionally been punctuated with a big rush to physical stores to snap up bargains for the holidays. Ashley Walton got out early to go to stores on Black Friday, but she left disappointed. Accordingly, IBM says smartphones drove more sales, too: 23.9% compared to tablets at 16.1%.

“The trend is no trend”, he said.

Black Friday is one of the busiest shopping days of the year, and Greenwood is no exception.

Not that there aren’t any hot items. “I’m looking at what some online sites are charging for shipping”. Still, there doesn’t seem to be panic right now.

At Best Buy in Jersey City, Durgaprasad Eerla, 25, said he was the first to get in a line that grew to over 50 people and eventually extended around the corner of the Best Buy in Newport Plaza, which would open at 8 a.m. yesterday.

Toys R Us CEO Dave Brandon said the lines weren’t as long as past year, but the traffic built throughout the night. It didn’t provide specific numbers.