Stores try to cater to savvier customers on Black Friday

49 percent of professionals shop from work on Cyber Monday. Olsen said she had done some online shopping, but preferred making in-person stops. Walmart has made major investments in its app recently, and the retailer chose to offer certain deals exclusively via app for the first time ever this year.

No matter when they shop, customers will be hunting for bargains.

Among the shoppers was Mitchell resident Kim Powell who exited the store with a red shopping cart stacked with a number of finds, auto keys in the air trying to locate her vehicle. That may explain why 65 percent will minimize their screens if their boss comes along. “Too many people – rude customers”. Visit www.kohls.com.

Stores have ramped up, preparing months in advance for their busiest day all year on merchandise, manpower and security.

Like Shana Yeager, 36, of Levittown, who hit both Toys R Us and Target in Langhorne. New this year: Target is expanding the 15 percent off discount to include all gaming consoles, iRobot vacuums, KitchenAid appliances and all Apple products, including iPhone and Apple Watch.

But spreading the shopping over the 4-day weekend is great for some shoppers.

It’s been coming for a while – I remember the righteous indignation a few years ago when Black Friday, the traditional kickoff of the holiday shopping season, started on Thanksgiving Day. Around 137 million people plan to or are considering doing their shopping during the Thanksgiving weekend, according to a survey conducted for the National Retail Federation. Retailers want to catch waves of shoppers looking for deals.

The bustle of human activity brought Reynaldo Pineda and his daughter, Melissa, to Los Cerritos Center instead shopping online. That’s a slight uptick from previous year when almost 136 million people snapped up deals over the holiday weekend.

“People are going insane”, Mathias said. “This includes online shopping”.

In a blog post published later in the day, Cohen said Thanksgiving Day sales have simply siphoned business away from Black Friday.

“It’s finally getting a little cold”, he said.

“The men are all watching the [football] game, and we all went shopping, said food quality supervisor Dee Nardelli, 47, of Shiloh Township, in Cumerland County”. That sale is followed by week-long deals.

Wal-Mart and others also are steering customers toward online deals, rather than just physical stores.

People saying maybe it wasn’t as busy this year because of online shopping.

The report points out an interesting trend: “Large retailers (those in Internet Retailer’s top 100) have seen twice the growth in online sales compared to small retailers since the beginning of the season”. Shoppers spent $1.93 billion online on Thanksgiving Day, according to data from Adobe.

By Friday morning, online Black Friday sales tracked by Adobe reached $490 million.

“Black Friday used to be the pinnacle event of the holiday shopping season”, said Shelley Kohan, vice president of retail consulting for RetailNext.

“I know it started yesterday, starting last night on Thanksgiving, as opposed to the actual Black Friday, but there are still a lot of good deals on the actual Friday”, Elizondo said. This gives you time to research the typical prices online so you can differentiate a truly good deal from advertising hype. “Online is better, faster, straight from our home”. Virus-infected e-cards are very common this time of year.Use credit cards.