By Suzanne Kapner 

The Thanksgiving shopping tradition has gotten ahead of the holiday itself.

On Nov. 10, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. offered many holiday promotions online or within its mobile app. J.C. Penney Co. sent its Black Friday advertisements to users of its mobile app on Nov. 4, and started those sales on Wednesday, a day earlier this year than last year and one day ahead of Thanksgiving.

Across the industry, retailers released advertisements of their biggest deals three days sooner this year on average than last, according to Market Track LLC, which analyzed emails, social media and retail websites. And the volume of emails that retailers sent to customers, who opted to receive them, increased 15% from Oct. 1 through Nov. 19, compared with the same period a year earlier, Market Track found.

Shoppers spent $27.2 billion between Nov. 1 and Nov. 23, a 4.3% increase over a year ago during that same time frame, according to Adobe Systems Inc., which analyzed data from 21 billion visits to retail websites. Adobe predicted that online spending on Thanksgiving Day would reach $2 billion, up 16% from a year ago.

In the battle for shoppers and in an effort to hold off advances from online rivals such as Amazon.com Inc., traditional retailers have been moving discounts earlier in the month, linking their stores and websites more closely and finding ways to capitalize on the rise in mobile shopping.

"Bricks-and-mortar stores are pulling out all the stops," said Pete Madden, a director in the retail practice at consulting firm AlixPartners. "They are making it clear they won't be beat on price, service or products."

The Friday after Thanksgiving has long served as the kickoff to the frenzied holiday shopping season.

Although it is no longer the busiest shopping day of the year, it remains vitally important to retailers locked in a fierce battle for market share.

This year, shoppers are expected to spend $27 billion on the day, making it the second-biggest U.S. shopping day of the year behind Super Saturday, which falls the weekend before Christmas, according to consulting firm Customer Growth Partners.

But Black Friday is no longer a one-day event; promotions are increasingly spread throughout November, as traditional retailers try to match more nimble online rivals.

Toys "R" Us Inc. made its Black Friday deals available to online shoppers on Wednesday night, hours before stores open at 5 p.m. on Thanksgiving.

Kohl's Corp. for the first time made "door-buster" deals normally reserved for in-store shoppers such as a $250 Samsung TV and a $130 Fitbit wristband available online, starting at midnight Thursday, before stores open at 6 p.m. on Thursday.

Amazon started its deals on Nov. 1. The web giant is offering new discounts every day, sometimes as often as every five minutes, through Dec. 22. In preparation for the holidays, Amazon expanded its product offerings by 30%, the equivalent of 3.6 million new products, according to 360pi, a retail pricing and assortment tracking firm.

The risk is that early spending will pull dollars forward from later in the season. That pattern occurred over past Thanksgiving weekends, as more stores opened on Thursday and siphoned sales away from Friday.

As a result, more retailers and malls will remain closed on Thanksgiving this year, including Hhgregg Inc., Office Depot Inc., the Mall of America and many malls owned by CBL & Associates Properties Inc.

Analysts are banking on financially healthier consumers opening their wallets now that wages are increasing and unemployment has fallen. Nearly 63% of consumers say it would be easy to find a job today, compared with 54% who said so a year ago, according to a survey conducted by market research firm America's Research Group.

The National Retail Federation forecasts total holiday shopping will rise 3.6% to $655.8 billion from a year ago with 137.4 million people shopping in stores and online during Thanksgiving weekend alone.

In what some analysts have dubbed the "Trump Bump," they are hopeful that President-elect Donald Trump will stimulate the economy and lower taxes, which means "a large segment of the population that was previously reluctant to spend," wrote Citi analyst Paul Lejuez, in a research note, "now feels better."

For brick-and-mortar retailers, the challenge is to draw more shoppers into their stores on what is a chaotic day marred by long lines and crowded parking lots. Last year, more people shopped online than in stores during the Thanksgiving weekend, according to the NRF. This year, only 23% of Americans plan to shop in stores on Black Friday, according to a survey conducted by Bankrate.com, a financial-services company. (A survey conducted by a mall-industry trade group offers an opposing view, that 81% of shoppers expect to spend in brick-and-mortar stores during the holiday weekend.)

Rose Sage was shopping Thursday night at a Wal-Mart in Washington, D.C. The 30-year-old said she buys most of her Christmas gifts online, but still shops in stores on Thanksgiving to grab a few deals.

"I don't usually get much. I like the rush," Ms. Sage said. She hoped to grab deals on a 55-inch TV for her home and Xbox as a Christmas gift for her sons, 6 and 7. But she plans to shop online over the weekend for most of her gifts. "I do Cyber Monday too," she said.

--Sarah Nassauer and Paul Ziobro contributed to this article.

Write to Suzanne Kapner at Suzanne.Kapner@wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 25, 2016 02:47 ET (07:47 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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