MA Black Friday Shoppers Finding Fewer Deals, Higher Prices

MASSACHUSETTS — The "buy two tires, get two tires free" sale that typically has customers lining up outside of Sullivan Tire locations at 6 a.m. on Black Friday is off this year.

"We'd love to do it again this year, but all our tires are stuck on a ship," a Sullivan Tire store manager said Friday.

The start of the holiday shopping season this year comes with a lot of obstacles for retailers, including an uptick in new coronavirus cases and the supply and labor shortages they've been struggling with for months. The COVID-19 pandemic ended the tradition of many stores opening on Thanksgiving, in large part because stores have a hard enough time finding people to work on non-holidays.

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Unlike last year, however, supply shortages and shipping delays are having the biggest impact on holiday shopping. Big retailers, including Nordstrom and Gap last week, have already warned shoppers they have inventory shortages.

As a result, consumers can expect to pay more for their gifts this year —if they can even find what they're looking for. Refinitiv, a financial data provider, puts this year's Black Friday, promotional discount at 33.4 percent, down from 37 percent offered in October and earlier this month.

Shoppers are expected to pay on average between 5 and 17 percent more for toys, clothing, appliances, TVs and others purchases on Black Friday this year compared with last year, according to Aurelien Duthoit, senior sector advisor at Allianz Research, with the biggest price increases on TVs. That’s because whatever discounts available will be applied to goods that already cost more.

"I think it is going to be a messy holiday season," said Neil Saunders, managing director at GlobalData Retail. "It will be a bit frustrating for retailers, consumers and the workers. We are going to see long lines. We are going to see messier stores. We are going to see delays as you collect online orders."

Beyond the more recent, pandemic-related shifts in holiday shopping, there are other, longer-term trends that have eaten into the day after Thanksgiving's claim as the busiest shopping day of the year. Online shopping means some of the best deals on hot items can come on days other than Black Friday. Socially-conscious shoppers have been saving their in-person shopping for Small Business Saturday in an effort to support local businesses.

Still, consumers are expected to once again spend more this year than they did last year — as is typically the case.

Craig Johnson, the president of the retail research firm Customer Growth Partners, told the New York Times holiday spending decreased each year during World War II. It also decreased 4.7 percent during 2008's great recession. But those are the only documented spending decreases since records started being kept.

"It just never goes down," said Johnson, who expect holiday spending to increase 6.7 percent this year from 2020. By comparison, holiday spending rose 8.2 percent in 2020 from 2019.

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.