As store sales fall and purchases shift online over the Thanksgiving weekend most U.S. retailers boost their web offerings, but many still overlook the sales impact from opening their doors on Thursday evening, Reuters reports.
It is widely understood that heavy discounting early in the holiday season—both online and in stores, not to mention retailers opening on Thursday evening—cuts into early morning Black Friday traffic and total sales that day. Which is why, for example, the snaking lines for “doorbuster” deals at 4 a.m. on Black Friday are a rare sight these days.
But the early openings are now increasingly hurting store sales not just on Black Friday but even on Saturday and Sunday, according to retail industry experts.
“There is a fixed demand pool over the weekend and most retailers are not expanding that shopper base by staying open on Thanksgiving,” said Craig Johnson, president of retail consultancy Customer Growth Partners. “They are just taking away sales from the rest of the weekend.”
Johnson said Thanksgiving sales went up by $2 billion to $11 billion this year but that happened at the expense of not just Friday but the weekend. He said over a $1 billion in sales from Friday and Saturday moved into Thursday, describing the economic shift as the “demand pull-forward phenomenon.”
