Stores less harried on this Black Friday

NEW YORK – Black Friday seemed a little less crazy this year.

There were squabbles here and there, and elbows got thrown, but the Friday morning crowds appeared smaller than usual and less frenzied, in part because many Americans took advantage of stores’ earlier opening hours to do their shopping on Thanksgiving Day.

Stores such as Wal-Mart and Target reported brisk Thanksgiving crowds. The colossal Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, said it drew 100,000 people between 5 p.m. Thursday and 1 a.m. Friday, nearly what it draws over a typical full day.

On Friday, plenty of shoppers were out, but it wasn’t elbow-to-elbow, said Moody’s analyst Michael Zucchero, at a mall in northern Connecticut.

“Traffic seems a little light,” he said. “Stores being open last night takes away some of the early birds.”

Online shopping, especially on phones and tablets, may be siphoning off some shoppers from the malls.

IBM, which tracks online sales, said they rose 8 percent compared with Black Friday last year as of 3 p.m. in the East, with much-increased shopping on mobile devices.

In the stores, Toys R Us and Target executives said shoppers seem to be buying more than just the doorbusters and are filling their carts with items not on sale. That’s a sign that lower gas prices and an improving job picture are making shoppers more confident about opening their wallets.

At clothing stores, discounts were steep, with Old Navy offering up to half off everything. Best Buy offered $100 off some iPads. And Target slashed prices on TVs and video game consoles.

Last year, sales on Black Friday slumped 13.2 percent to $9.74 billion, according to ShopperTrak, which tracks data at more than 70,000 stores globally. Bill Martin, co-founder of ShopperTrak, said it is unclear how stores will fare this year.

Retailers have turned to Thanksgiving openings to stay competitive and avoid losing sales that have shifted earlier into the holiday, said Ramesh Swarmy, a retail partner at the Deloitte consulting firm.

The holiday weekend still sets the tone for the shopping season, whose sales this year are expected to rise 4.1 percent to $611.9 billion. That would be the biggest increase since 2011. Black Friday has been the biggest shopping day of the year since 2005.

Brian Cornell, who became Target’s CEO in August and was at a Target store in New York’s East Harlem neighborhood on Thursday, said shopping traditions have changed.

“It’s been more of a week event,” he said.