Black Friday Adds to Confusion for Retailers

Shoppers gave mixed messages to the major retailers over the Black Friday weekend as more consumers walked through doors, but walked out spending less money as they favored deeply discounted items, according to a survey form the National Retail Federation.

According the report approximately 195 million shoppers battled crowds to get the low-priced items over the busiest shopping weekend of the year. This is up from the 172 million that were reported to have shopped on the same weekend a year ago when the sales declined by the biggest margin in four decades.

While more consumers were seen in stores, they were sticking to pared down shopping lists, and targeted the bargains that were offered to get them in the door. The average spend dropped to $343.31, from $372.57 a year ago.

Overall sales for the weekend increased marginally to $41.2 billion from the $41 billion seen a year ago, as an increasing number of consumers are concerned with the job market forced shoppers to focus on practical items for themselves and those on their gift lists.

One big bright-spot for retailers over the weekend was the 11 percent rise in Internet sales to $913 million, according to data released by Internet research firm comScore on Sunday.

Major retailers broke new ground by offering consumers the option of avoiding the crowds as they offered the same early Friday morning doorbuster discounts online as seen in store in an effort to draw as many consumers as possible.

This move is expected to negatively impact some of the expected traffic for today's "Cyber Monday" discounts for online retailers. The season is being called a "Twitter Christmas," as retailers have been tweeting about discounts and promoting sales on Facebook pages.

"Forget Black Friday for bricks and Cyber Monday for clicks – this year it's all about making it easy for customers to satisfy their shopping fix – wherever and whenever," retail strategist for Kurt Salmon Associates, John Long said.

A complete report on the numbers for the Black Friday weekend will not be available till Thursday as retailer report Nov ember sales.

Related Stocks and ETFs:
Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT)
Best Buy (NYSE: BBY)
Target (NYSE: TGT)
Macy's (NYSE: M)
The TJX Companies, Inc. (NYSE: TJX)
Retail HOLDRs (NYSE: RTH)

You May Also Be Interested In

• American Resources set to join Russell 3000 and Russell Microcap indexes
• Genprex receives Canadian patent notice for Reqorsa combo therapy
• FDA backs Entera Bio's Phase 3 trial plan for oral osteoporosis drug