On this year’s Black Friday, retailers and analysts said they saw a surge in traffic at stores and malls over last year, and also were noticing that shoppers snapped up discretionary items for themselves rather than gifts or necessities.
Still, the shop-a-thon that began late on Thanksgiving night was not a free-for-all. Burned by the recession and its aftershocks even now, many consumers looked for major deals, or stayed within strict budgets by limiting themselves to cash.
There were longer lines than in recent years, from the hundreds of people who spent the night outside a Best Buy in Oakland, Calif., to the 75 people outside an Atlanta-area Macy’s at 4 a.m. When the doors opened, the crowd was so excited that one bleary-eyed man ran smack into a glass window. (“The window looked like a door,” said the man, who was unhurt. “It’s too early.”)
Near Chicago, Wal-Mart tried a crowd-control technique: handing wrist bands to shoppers who wanted access to the 5 a.m. electronics prices, so admission would be limited and there would be less of a frenzy. At an upscale mall outside Los Angeles, although shoppers were treating themselves to items like limited-edition Nike shoes and jewelry, many paid in cash.
“You can just feel it in the air — people want to spend money again,” said Karen Stanek, manager of an Old Navy store in Arlington Heights, Ill. “The mood of the customers is more positive than it’s been in years.”
Analysts, mall owners and retailers said that traffic was higher than last November and that people seemed to be spending more. But concrete assessments as to whether sales were up over a year ago, and if so, whether they were enough to lift major retailers out of their long-term, recession-driven slumps, were not available. The first sales figures for Black Friday will not be available until later this weekend.
Read More: Shoppers Flock Back to the Mall to Hunt Deals
