[bert]

-——but not for price changes,-——

That is the meat and potatoes of the report.

The sales were greater because of inflation. the prices of stuff rose, not the volume of goods sold

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

Particularly in the case of Best Buy, but relevant to other retailers as well (especially Target), the apparent success of Black Friday was based on huge numbers of customers and initial sales figures. The problem was that these customers were only buying the very aggressively marked-down and heavily promoted items, and weren't buying any of the other, full-price, stuff that the loss leader promo items were supposed to lure them to. The margin on what they sold was non-existent.

A lot of these stores got free publicity as local news crews covered the people camping out in front for days. What they didn't report was that, by 2 AM, those stores were ghost towns, many of them looking like a tornado hit.

The problem going forward is that the retailers have basically trained their customers to shop Black Friday at midnight, and to go after the most outrageous, heavily advertised deals. They're realizing that it's craziness, that the toll on margin and on the workers is creating more problems, but no one can figure out a way out of it because they're afraid of letting those customers go someplace else.