Report from the Frontline of the Shopping Wars

Today is Black Friday, November 28, 2008 - the traditional start of the holiday shopping season - and for what seems like the 100th time (although it is only about 10 times) I awoke early and trudged off to the shopping malls and power centers of Northern Virginia to check on the health of the electronics business. While we won’t know how successful these sales were until December 8th, when NPD’s weekly data is released and we deliver our annual Black Friday shopping report later that week, as well as update everyone through our joint Black Friday webinar with DisplaySearch, I am here to tell you that, based on my shopping this morning, and other reports already trickling out, that our fears that Black Friday would fall flat are likely overblown.

The collapse of sales and consumers’ expectations over the last eight weeks (as well documented in NPD’s weekly tracking service data and the NPD Consumer Technology Holiday Snapshot Report) has been swift and scary. The key question for today is whether that decline can be arrested by the deep discounts and shopping excitement that Black Friday has traditionally brought.

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