Wal-Mart is making Black Friday a week-long event, shifting away from the chaotic one-day sales that once epitomized the day after Thanksgiving.
The “New Black Friday” will include five days of sales on and in stores, starting at 12:01 a.m. online on Thanksgiving and running through Cyber Monday, the Bentonville, Ark.-based company said in a statement Wednesday.
“Black Friday has become Black Friday week,” Duncan Mac Naughton, Walmart’s chief merchandising officer, told reporters Tuesday. “Our customers want to shop when they want to shop so we’re trying to expand the times and product availability with them.”
Shoppers are relying less on Black Friday for holiday deals. About 70 percent of consumers consider Black Friday unimportant because of the prevalence of sales throughout the holiday season, according to a report this month from Accent Marketing Services in Jeffersonville, Ind.
Shoppers also are increasingly turning to the Web and away from brick-and-mortar stores. About 49 percent of consumers plan to research products and make purchases on Thanksgiving morning this year, up from 31 percent in 2013, PricewaterhouseCoopers said in its 2014 holiday outlook last month.
