Wal-Mart Spreads ‘Black Friday’ Over Five Days
Shoppers Accustomed to Online Convenience Lose Interest in Lining Up at Night
‘It used to be called Black Friday, then it became Thursday, now it’s a week long,’ said Wal-Mart U.S. chief merchant Duncan Mac Naughton. “Maybe we should just call it November.” Wal-Mart shoppers on Thanksgiving Day last year in Alexandria, Va. MICHAEL REYNOLDS/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is abandoning the frenzied one-day-only “Black Friday” sales model used to jump-start the annual holiday-shopping season.
The world’s biggest retailer instead will offer its best deals on television sets, toys and other gifts over a five-day period beginning in the last week of November into early December. Wal-Mart also will have some of its deepest discounts online to better cater to shoppers who have grown accustomed to quick home delivery and the ability to check real-time prices on their mobile phones.
“It used to be called Black Friday, then it became Thursday, now it’s a week long,” said Wal-Mart U.S. chief merchant Duncan Mac Naughton. “Maybe we should just call it November.”
Mr. Mac Naughton said Wal-Mart is trying to cater to the changing tastes of shoppers who no longer find it appealing to camp out in the middle of the night in hopes of snagging a steal. People also want to shop on their own schedules, he said, rather than set times prescribed by the retailers. The amount of shoppers in its stores in the middle of the night during the holiday has decreased over the past few years, he said.
The change at Wal-Mart follows similar moves by competitors to stretch out the shopping festivities. Black Friday deals had already started to encroach on Thanksgiving dinner and spill across the entire weekend.
Target Corp. , which is offering free shipping throughout the holiday season, began giving shoppers early access to certain deals this week and plans a presale on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Best Buy Co. plans to spread out its in-stores deals over Thanksgiving and Black Friday. It will also offer online-only deals on Thanksgiving. Amazon.com Inc. started offering discounts this month.
Retailers also are working to avoid the sometimes-violent scuffles that have come during Black Friday so-called door-buster sales. Wal-Mart upgraded its holiday crowd-control measures after a worker was trampled to death by shoppers in 2008 at a store in Valley Stream, N.Y.
Spreading out the deals and assuring customers that they won’t have to stand in line for a product that might not be available produces a “calming effect across the store,” Mr. Mac Naughton said.
Over the five days, Wal-Mart will feature different items on different days, in its stores and online. “Because Black Friday has become the whole week, we want to make sure we have compelling offers across all days,” Mr. Mac Naughton said.
Wal-Mart will begin offering online-only specials with free shipping Thanksgiving morning. It will continue with multiple door-buster deals starting at 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving through the weekend and cap it off with a flurry of online offers the following Monday, a day e-commerce companies have dubbed Cyber Monday.
Wal-Mart also plans to start matching online prices from its website, Walmart.com, as well as rival such as Amazon starting this Friday. The price match will extend beyond the holidays, and the retailer will brief its employees on the plan Wednesday. Currently, Wal-Mart matches prices only for local brick-and-mortar competitors.
The Wall Street Journal previously reported that the retailer had been testing the program since September to make the discounter more competitive with rivals such as Target and Best Buy, which already offer the service.
Wal-Mart is struggling to win back customers to its supercenters as shoppers turn to dollar stores and e-commerce sites. If Wal-Mart fails to book sales and traffic growth in the U.S. for the quarter ended Oct. 31, it will mark two full years of declining shopper traffic and seven quarters without any sales growth, excluding newly opened or closed stores.
Wal-Mart will report results for the latest quarter on Thursday.
In August, the company cut its earnings forecast for the year, citing sluggish consumer spending, increased health-care expenses and greater investments in its e-commerce operations.
