How To Avoid The 'Black Friday Crunch'? Shop At Sears

Halloween has come and gone, which means it is now time to start looking forward to Black Friday shopping sales. The annual sales event is expected to be one of the busiest digital shopping days in U.S. history, according to a consumer insights and prediction report released by salesforce.com, inc. CRM.

But consumers looking to do their shopping in stores and avoid a rush of crowd can do so now at Sears Holdings Corp SHLD's core Sears stores or Kmart.

Sears and Kmart are currently hosting a "first-of-their-kind" discount event with everything on sale in stores, CNBC reported. Discounts range from 10 to 50 percent at Sears stores and 10 to 40 percent at Kmart stores. Included in the sales are appliances, which could be discounted by up to 40 percent.

The sales event will run through the Saturday of the Thanksgiving weekend and is geared toward consumers who want to avoid the "Black Friday crunch." Deals can be found in "every nook and cranny of the store," Kelly Cook, chief marketing officer of Sears and Kmart told CNBC.

Sears and Kmart are addressing the needs of many consumers, including extra time for shopping, added customer service, more freebies and the concept of a "whole store on sale," the executive added.

Investors would have a valid reason to be concerned with an entire "store on sale" and the subsequent impact on margins. But Cook said the company tested a similar "blowout" sales event at a select Kmart store to better understand what impact this would have on margins. The company found that Kmart shoppers frequented the store more often after the sale, which was "viable economically."

On the other hand, Sears' experiment could result in a repeat of 2016's trends, in which early Thanksgiving and Black Friday weekend sales declined on a year-over-year basis. This was due to sales being "pulled forward with earlier promotions" although the 2016 presidential election did serve as a distraction to consumers as well.

Related Links:

The Holiday Season Has Been Kind To Discount Retailers, Not So Much Toward Department Stores

Black Friday Discounts By Retailers: 2015 Vs. 2016

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Image Credit: By Mike Kalasnik from Fort Mill, USA [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons