Attention Investors: Here Is What You Need To Know About Last-Minute Shoppers

CNBC's Courtney Reagan noted that Friday is expected to be the third busiest shopping day of the holiday shopping season. Of course, Black Friday is the busiest day, followed by next Monday when shoppers are likely to find a good bargain on leftover inventory.

Reagan further noted that retail analysts and experts remain confident that total holiday sales are expected to rise three to four percent year-over-year although this will come at the expense of Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN's dominance.

Specifically, out of nearly two million receipts analyzed by Slice Intelligence, Amazon accounted for 36.9 percent of the transactions. Best Buy Co Inc BBY ranked a distant second at 3.9 percent, followed by Target Corporation TGT at 2.9 percent and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. WMT at 2.7 percent.

Reagan continued that retailers such as J C Penney Company Inc JCP are better off selling merchandise to consumers in-store as opposed to online because their small scale in comparison to the dominant online retailers implies it is more expensive to conduct an online transaction compared to an in-store transaction.

On the other hand, some retail analysts observed that in-store promotional activity has become more aggressive than management teams had planned. Accordingly, investors should brace for the possibility of lower margins when department stores and retailers report their earnings.