While Black Friday has a strong hold on Americans’ imaginations as a day of crazed shopping, it has lost stature over the last decade as stores opened on Thanksgiving and shopping shifted to Amazon and other online retailers. The National Retail Federation predicts a sales increase of 8.5% to 10.5% for all of November and December, after 8% growth in those months in 2020. Overall holiday sales are expected to grow this year. Steve Sadove, senior adviser for Mastercard, says the numbers speak to the “strength of the consumer.“ That was above its 20% growth forecast for the day. Still, Black Friday retail sales surged 29.8% through mid-afternoon, according to Mastercard SpendingPulse, which tracks all types of payments, including cash and credit cards. The staffing issues that have hit many retailers and restaurants, however, also affected Mall of America. “We had a fantastic start,” said Mall of America senior vice president Jill Renslow. The country’s largest mall, the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, said nearly 100,000 people had come as of early afternoon Friday, more than double last year but a bit shy of 2019 numbers. “I came here because I figured since it was Black Friday, they’d have the new Switch OLED in stock, but they didn’t,” said MacDonald, who waited an hour and a half to get in for the sought-after Nintendo video game console.
Out-of-stock items due to supply crunches, higher prices for gas and food, and labor shortages that make it more difficult to respond to customers are also causing frustrations for shoppers.Ĭhristian MacDonald, the first person in a line of about 75 people waiting for a Costa Mesa, California Target store to open, came away empty-handed. Malls and stores report decent-sized crowds, if not the floods of people that used to fight over the latest toys and electronics - online shopping is much too common for that now, and discounts are both more subdued and spread out over the weeks leading up to Christmas, on both websites and in stores. NEW YORK (AP) - On this year’s Black Friday, things almost seem normal.