A Shopper Marketer's View On Thursday's Early Start To Black Friday - Part 1

I decided to join the crowds in the late Thanksgiving shopping start to Black Friday.  I was curious to see how this approach would vary from last year's early morning opening at big box retailers.  I also had some shopping to do...

Overall, I would call the night a mixed success for the 3 big box retailers I visited. 

Walmart
I started at Walmart who started many specials at 10:00 and others at midnight -although the stores were open before both official start times.  The store was packed.  There was not a cart (or buggy as they are called here in South Carolina) to be found in the store or the overflowing parking lot.  As I expected, the specials were mostly pre-shopped before the official "bargain" start times.  While greeters passed out maps to find specials, many were picked clean.  Pallets of goods shrinkwrapped and marked that the price would be honored until midnight were ripped apart and empty long before that time.  Shoppers were huddled in aisle with full carts waiting for the hours to pass.  Others grabbed the appropriate time products and waited in lines at registers across the store to check out.  It was fairly well organized, but those who showed up at the posted time for specials were likely disappointed by those who pre-shopped.  I heard more than one frustrated shopper who missed out.

Target
The theme for the night at Target was lines.  The line to get in was 4-5 people wide and ran the length of the shopping center.  The picture above shows about 1/3 of this crowd.  At midnight, entering the store was an orderly rush to get specials, but quickly aisles reached gridlock with shoppers and carts trying to reach different parts of the store.  Departments were so packed with product and people that carts often could not pass.  Shoppers repeatedly bumped into each other and displays.  After 15-20 minutes of shopping frenzy, the aisles started to fill with shoppers moving toward the registers.  The front register set up was well run, but little planning seemed evident on where to line up the check out line as it began to build.  Lines of shoppers soon wrapped back and forth using all major aisle of the store.  For a while, there was some chaos as shoppers pushed to merge at intersections.  Eventually some employees started working as traffic cops at intersections and order was restored.  Many shoppers would end up waiting over 2 hours in line to checkout.  This was the busiest store of the night and the worst shopping line experience.

Best Buy
I ended my night at Best Buy.  They had a midnight waiting line that was about 75% of Target's line at opening.  The rush was over by the time I reached there, but the store was still busy.  Many specials were gone, but the staff was orderly and helped identify where remaining discounted product could be found.  The store was well staffed and it was still easy to get help with locating product or answering a technical question.  The checkout line again snaked through the store, but the path was well marked and there was a man with helium balloons marking the end of the line.  While checkout took longer than Walmart, this was the best run shopping experience of the night - and an improvement at Best Buy over the previous year.

Was it worth going shopping?  Yes - for both the bargains and the experience.  Long night.  Learning from this experience is shared in Part 2.