Shoppers failed to queue up in the cold this year to snap up Black Friday bargains — instead scouring the web for deals as they continued to fret over inflation and a wobbly US job market.
Those who did turn out early Friday seemed underwhelmed. Deontay Phillips, a 26-year-old who serves in the military, was disappointed by the discounts at a Best Buy store in Newport News, Va.
“It’s not really what I expected,” Phillips told Bloomberg News. “I probably won’t do this again.”
While overall spending is seen on par with last year, unit sales could drop as much as 2.5%, according to Circana, a consumer research firm. Translation: People are being forced to spend more to buy less stuff — particularly when it comes to go-to holiday categories like toys, apparel and electronics.
“Santa Claus is going to show up this Christmas,” Marshal Cohen, Circana’s chief retail adviser, told The Post. “He’s just going to show up with less boxes under the tree and consumers are going to spend close to the same amount of money as they did last year.”
Black Friday wasn’t a total bust, but doorbuster deals that would get consumers in the store in the middle of the night to take advantage of rock-bottom prices hardly exist anymore, said the analyst, who has been following the retail sector for 30 years.
“I don’t have any numbers yet, but I can tell you every other indication — whether it be how many cars are in a parking lot, how many shopping bags are going up and down an escalator, how many people are at the checkout counter — this is in no way like any other Black Friday,” Cohen said.
Online spending on Thanksgiving Thursday rose 5.3% year-over-year to $6.4 billion, according to Adobe Analytics. That was better than expected — further diluting Black Friday’s significance, according to the firm.
Andy Tsay, professor at Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business put it more bluntly, telling Reuters: “Black Friday is an obsolete concept and has now become just a point in time.”
It hasn’t helped that economic headwinds have caused retailers to offer steep discounts much earlier than usual — as early as mid-October, Cohen noted. While Walmart and Best Buy stores weren’t packed like previous seasons, Target got a bump from a swag bag for shoppers to buy in-store.
Retail experts said this year’s must-have items looked a lot like last year’s. They include headphones, Stanley and Odwalla water bottles, 55-inch TVs, beauty products, coffee makers, Pokemon trading cards, Ice cream machines and video games for the new PlayStation.
High food prices have squeezed holiday budgets. As previously reported by The Post, shoppers are also taking advantage of deep discounts on everyday items like dog and cat food, detergent, socks and underwear — and not luxury items.
US consumer confidence sagging to a seven-month low in November, according to the Conference Board, with fewer households planning to buy cars, houses and other big-ticket items over the next six months, or to make vacation plans.
Consumer spending in the last week of October and the first week of November of 2024 was lower than the same period in 2023, according to Earnest Analytics data. That initial softness was due in part to the 2024 presidential election — so the 2025 figures look deceptively strong by comparison, Cohen said.
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