NEW YORK -- Deep discounts on everything from sweaters to TVs drove shoppers out of hibernation for the Thanksgiving weekend, but the buying was tempered and sales for the traditional start of the holiday season appear at best in line with stores' dismal predictions.
The sales receipts, however, came at the expense of profits, and merchants are facing a big challenge exciting financially strapped shoppers for the rest of the season, expected to be the weakest in decades.
The nation's retailers -- who since mid-September have suffered from the most dramatic falloff in spending in decades amid a ballooning financial crisis -- opened their stores as early as midnight on Thursday, holding their breath wondering if shoppers would show up for the pre-dawn specials. But while the crowds did come out, analysts say they were thinner than last year, and according to some accounts, business fell off sharply for the remainder of the weekend.
Shoppers were focused on bargains and smaller-ticket, practical items such as blenders and video games, as they worry about layoffs, tightening credit and shrinking retirement funds.
Even online spending, once a bright spot in retailing, has been hit hard by economic woes in recent months. ComScore, an Internet research company, reported Sunday that online spending was up a modest 2 percent for the combined Thanksgiving Day and Friday, compared with the year-ago period.
"I've cut my budget in half. I usually have a spending limit of $50 per person, but this year, it's $25," said Laura Bentley of Miami, who was at the local Dolphin Mall on Saturday, her first day of holiday shopping.
Manno and Poun Sam of Houston, who had just purchased some toys, including a Crayola coloring game and a stuffed animal, at a Wal-Mart store in suburban Houston on Saturday, said they were trying to stay within a $500 budget.
"We're not buying anything fancy," said Manno Sam, an assembly-line worker. "We can't afford it."
New York-based retail consultant Walter Loeb said he expects sales for the weekend to be below year-ago levels, based on discussions this weekend with key executives from discounters and department stores.
But he added, "It wasn't as bad as some feared. ... People were buying but they bought cheap, and the results were not as good."
Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst at NPD Group, a market research group, who had a network of analysts at 53 mall locations across the country this weekend, said that "the holiday started off with some promise but quickly moved to concern."
"It could have been a disaster, but it wasn't," he said, noting that he estimates that the weekend's sales were at best even with the same holiday weekend a year ago.
Karen MacDonald, a spokeswoman at Taubman Centers Inc., which operates 24 malls in 11 states, said that based on a sampling of malls, business on Friday was anywhere from unchanged to up mid-single digits. But on Saturday, sales were unchanged to down slightly.
"Friday was encouraging, but Saturday wasn't as good as we hoped," she said.
Aside from the economy, however, Black Friday's early morning madness has also lost some of its steam because of the abundance of bargains that shoppers can find on the Web. Cohen also noted there's less frenzy this year because, with the exception of some isolated hard-to-find hits such as Fisher-Price's Elmo Live and Nintendo's "Wii Fit" exercise game, there isn't a particular gift that's a "big standout."
While Black Friday isn't a predictor of the holiday season, it acts as a barometer of consumers' willingness to spend. Complicating matters is a shorter buying season -- 27 days between Black Friday and Christmas -- instead of 32 last year, putting more pressure on retailers.
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