As the nation’s retail executives began poring over, and in some cases despairing over, sales receipts from the holiday weekend, one pattern became clearer.
Consumers mobbed discount chains, with their $398 laptops and 5 a.m. openings, but largely shopped right past specialty retailers at the mall.
The disparity, analysts said, could indicate a tough season ahead for clothing retailers like Gap and Aeropostale and even deeper discounts for shoppers as the chains scramble to build momentum in the crucial approach to Christmas.
ShopperTrak, which measures purchases at 45,000 mall- based merchants, found that sales for the day after Thanksgiving fell 0.9 percent from last year, to $8.01 billion, a figure not adjusted for inflation.
“The specialty guys just got outgunned this time around,” said John D. Morris, a retail analyst at Harris Nesbitt.
The winners, he said, were the discount chains with locations outside the malls, apparently the beneficiaries of an 11.4 percent increase in weekend spending among Visa USA card holders.
Wal-Mart reported a record 10 million shoppers before noon Friday. In a recorded phone call, the company said Friday sales “exceeded plans” and that consumers continued to shop after the early-morning discounts expired.
One possible explanation for the in-the-mall, outside-the-mall discrepancy: Discount chains blitzed consumers with advertising well before Thanksgiving, opened their stores even earlier than last year and offered the most talked-about discounts, such as a $188 15-inch flat-panel television at Circuit City and a $77 Hewlett-Packard 4-megapixel digital camera at Staples.
The mall-based merchants, on the other hand, largely avoided circulars or television advertising.
Gap, in a surprising break with tradition, stopped marketing its marquee brand on television after years of aggressive campaigns with stars like Sarah Jessica Parker, Missy Elliott and Joss Stone.