Price-wary holiday shoppers approach sales with caution

Cautious shoppers hunted Friday for the best deals at stores and online as retailers offered new discounts to entice consumers weighed down by inflation but eager to start buying Christmas gifts.

Elevated prices for food, rent, gasoline and other essentials made many people more selective, reluctant to spend unless there is a big sale, retail analysts said. Some shoppers dipped more into savings, turning to “buy now, pay later” services that allow payment in installments, or running up their credit cards at a time when the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates to cool the U.S. economy.

This year’s trends are a contrast from a year ago when consumers were buying early for fear of not getting what they needed amid supply-network clogs. Stores didn’t have to discount much because they were struggling to bring in items.

Early shopping turned out to be a fleeting trend, said Rob Garf, vice president and general manager of retail at Salesforce, which tracks online sales. People this year are holding out for the best bargains, and retailers responded this week with more attractive online deals after

offering mostly lackluster discounts earlier in the season.

The average discount rate in the U.S. across all categories online was 31% on Thanksgiving, up from 27% the previous year, according to Salesforce data. The steepest discounts were in home appliances, general apparel, makeup and luxury handbags.

Some Black Friday shoppers in Northwest Arkansas fondly recalled the days of frenzied crowds rushing into stores and fighting over the last Cabbage Patch Kid or Tickle Me Elmo. But this year, people sauntered from store to store, often leaving with small, if any, purchases.

Mary Robinson of Rogers said she was surprised at the lack of crowds Friday. On the other hand, “we’ve been getting some pretty good deals,” she said.

Robinson, who was with her granddaughters Kaydync and Jade Robinson at a shopping strip skirting the Pinnacle Hills Promenade, said the three had planned their trip the day before.

“It’s a tradition with us,” Mary Robinson said. They’d not been swayed by the early sales promotions and online shopping events.

They’d started with a trip to Walmart at 6 a.m., she said, and after leaving Old Navy, were ready to move on to Kohl’s and Lowe’s.

“We plan to get all our Christmas shopping done today,” Mary Robinson said.

Other shoppers, though, were content to wing it.

Stephanie Grigson, pushing a stroller with her already-sleeping baby, said she was just starting at one end of the strip and would walk along, “maybe stopping at Old Navy and PetSmart.”

A young woman outside the Carters/Oshkosh store didn’t want to stop for an interview but said in passing, “It’s kind of slow, isn’t it?”

Tim Taylor had come with his family from Tahlequah, Okla., to shop in Rogers. About 30 minutes after arriving, he was sitting on a bench outside of Old Navy where his wife and mother-in-law were shopping. His daughter Jeanie-Marie drowsed in her stroller.

“Guy shopping is simple,” Taylor said. “We don’t need to touch everything. I go into the store and look real quick, then I’m out.”

The family still had a lot ahead of them, though. Taylor said they’d probably go to T.J. Maxx next, then maybe nearby Dillard’s and the Bass Pro Shops on the opposite side of the Promenade.

His wife also does a lot of online shopping, Taylor said. “But I like coming out and looking, because you can find things [in stores] that you can’t find online.”

There were almost half a dozen police vehicles parked outside the Walmart in North Little Rock on Friday morning, but traffic was minimal there and at nearby McCain Mall.

Local resident Kaylee Brown decided to browse at the Target on McCain Boulevard around midday.

“Last year, we got everything on Amazon all at once on an Amazon credit card, but this year, since the hours and stuff are more back to normal, instead of having to go out shopping on Thanksgiving night, so we got out at 6 a.m. and went to Walmart and did more the traditional shopping this year,” Brown said.

Brown said the lines weren’t too long at the Walmart in Cabot where her family shopped this year.

“But it was just a little less crowded than this, it wasn’t bad at all,” Brown said at midday at Target.

“It seemed like the electronics had like limited supply, it seems like there’s extra, like people aren’t buying it, everybody’s shopping online,” Brown said.

Rebecca Rutherford said she will do online shopping and shopping sales in person starting in January and throughout the year, so she didn’t really have a plan when she arrived to browse Target on Friday.

“I really have no plan, I just like to come out and just kind of walk around and see if I find anything. I usually have all my stuff already done by this time of year,” Rutherford said.

Rutherford said she enjoys checking out the sales of toys for her son and daughter.

She said her daughter “loves all the girly toys, my son wants an electric scooter, and a little mini finger skate board.”

Macy’s Herald Square in Manhattan, where discounts included 60% off fashion jewelry and 50% off select shoes, was bustling with shoppers early Friday.

The traffic was “significantly larger” on Black Friday compared with the previous two years because shoppers feel more comfortable in crowds, Macy’s Chief Executive Officer Jeff Gennette said.

He said that bestsellers from Macy’s online sale, which started last weekend, included 50% off beauty sets. Last year Macy’s, like many other stores, had supply chain difficulties and some of the gifts didn’t arrive until after Christmas.

“Right now, we are set and ready to go, ” he said.

Major retailers including Walmart and Target stuck with their pandemic-era decision to close stores on Thanksgiving Day, moving away from doorbusters and instead pushing discounts on their websites.

But people are still shopping on Thanksgiving — online. Salesforce data showed online sales spiked in the evening during the holiday this year, suggesting people went from feasting to phone shopping. And with holiday travel up, a greater share of online shopping occurred on mobile devices this year.

“The mobile phone has become the remote control of our daily lives, and this led to an increase in shopping on the couch as consumers settled in after Thanksgiving dinner,” Salesforce’s Garf said.

Shoppers spent $5.3 billion online on Thanksgiving Day, up 2.9% from the holiday last year, according to Adobe Analytics, which monitors spending across websites. Adobe expects that online buying on Black Friday will hit $9 billion, up just 1% from a year ago.

Against today’s economic backdrop, the National Retail Federation — the largest retail trade group — expects holiday sales growth will slow to a range of 6% to 8%, from the blistering 13.5% growth of a year ago. However, these figures, which include online spending, aren’t adjusted for inflation, so real spending could even be down from a year ago.

Analysts consider the fiveday Black Friday weekend, which includes Cyber Monday, a key barometer of shoppers’ willingness to spend. The two-month period between Thanksgiving and Christmas represents about 20% of the retail industry’s annual sales.

On Tuesday, the federation is scheduled to release its figures on retail spending over the Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday weekend.

Information for this article was contributed by Anne D’Innocenzio, Haleluya Hadero, Alexandra Olson and Cora Lewis of The Associated Press and Serenah McKay and Cristina LaRue of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.