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Do Strong “Black Friday” Sales Mean Success?

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Several retail research firms believe that “Black Friday” store traffic could trump that of the last three years. But, that does not mean the shopping season will be a success.

The “Black Friday” weekend may post record store traffic. That would mean relief to store owners who have suffered since 2008. But, retail habits have changed enough so that foot traffic to stores could be a poor representation of overall success for the season.

Comscore recently announced that online sales from Thanksgiving to the end of December will be up 15% to $37.6 billion when compared to the same period last year. That means Amazon.com’s (NASDAQ: AMZN) retail machine will gain revenue. It has several new products to draw people to its website. The most important of these is the Kindle Fire. There is a theory that shoppers look at what they want to buy in stores and then order the items from Amazon.com to get the best prices, and free shipping.

There has also been a shift from the purchase of gifts on “Black Friday” to purchases in mid-December. Shoppers believe, in some cases, that as the end of the year approaches, retail outlets will lower prices to clear inventory.

“Black Friday” store traffic could be a false signal about how overall holiday sales will fare.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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