Consumers began shopping before dawn Thursday, seeking discounts and continuing a relatively new Thanksgiving tradition.
“I come every year,” Lory Rivera told ABC7 outside the Burbank Kmart store that opened at 6 a.m. “I come here for the toys. Last year I got the majority of my shopping done today.”
Most Kmart stores will be open for 40 consecutive hours until 10 p.m Friday as part of what company officials billed as an unprecedented monthlong “Holiday Blowout” that began on Nov. 1 with 10-50 percent off everything in the store, with some exclusions.
Additional discounts will be in effect from 6 p.m. Thursday to 2 p.m. Friday.
Shoppers began camping out in front of the Best Buy store in Pasadena on Wednesday night, hoping to be able to buy discounted televisions, computers and other electronic items when it opens at 5 p.m.
Walmart started the practice of opening on Thanksgiving almost 10 years ago when it announced it would offer Black Friday deals on Thanksgiving and have its stores open all day, said Ana Serafin Smith, the senior director of media relations for the National Retail Federation.
“When they made that announcement it automatically triggered all department stores and other big stores to follow suit,” Smith told City News Service.
Some retailers drew “considerable backlash from shoppers who felt that store employees should be able to spend their time with their families rather than working on Thanksgiving,” said Lars Perner, an assistant professor of clinical marketing at the USC Marshall School of Business.
Many stores staff Thanksgiving with seasonal employees and those who volunteer to work, and pay them time-and-a-half.
Opening on Thanksgiving has been “good for some” retailers “and not well for others,” Smith said.
“Some retailers over the last couple of years like Nordstrom, REI, Costco have chosen to close their stores on Thanksgiving Day because it was the best business decision for them,” Smith said.
Consumers can shop online on Thanksgiving at stores that are closed that day “and going to be able to get amazing Thanksgiving Day deals online as they would in stores,” Smith said.
“Online shopping has become really attractive to do on Thanksgiving Day because you can still spend quality time with family and loved ones but you can be on your mobile phone and shopping with your favorite retailer for the rest,” Smith said.
“That’s the beauty of the transformation of technology in the retail industry. The consumer is always shopping.”
A survey conducted by Prosper Insights & Analytics for the National Retail Federation found that 32 million adults American would be shopping on Thanksgiving, about the same amount as in recent years, Smith said.
The Thanksgiving figure trails the rest of the holiday weekend — Black Friday (115 million), Small Business Saturday (71 million) and Sunday (35 million), the survey found.
“Retailers are playing their cards right,” Smith said. “They’re modifying their store hours to make sure that the consumers are getting what they need, whether it is a consumer that wants to shop in store, which is closer to the older generation (baby boomers) and Gen Zers (those born from the mid-1990s to mid-2000s).
“Millennials love online shopping. That’s why some of these retailers are still offering some really good deals online for the Millennials.”
—City News Service