NEW YORK — The following is a sampling of Thanksgiving/Black Friday strategies by leading CE retailers:
Best Buy: The industry’s 600-pound gorilla has taken a swipe at competitors and Ultra HD TV pricing by offering a 55-inch Samsung 4K TV (Model UN- 55HU6830FXZA) for $900 Thanksgiving weekend. Also sending price points swooning is a 50-inch 1080p Panasonic LED TV, described as a Best Buy exclusive, which will sale for $200 during the Black Friday period.
Stores will open at 5 p.m. Thanksgiving Day; will close by 1 a.m. that night; and will reopen at 8 a.m. Friday morning. The Thursday afternoon and Friday morning store openings will each be accompanied by a separate wave of doorbuster deals, and onlineonly “doorbuster” pricing is promised for all day on Thanksgiving.
Walmart: The world’s largest retailer has formally given store managers the discretion to match prices with online competitors, president/CEO Greg Foran announced last week.
Holiday plans include a “New Black Friday,” which stretches doorbuster offerings across five days, from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, with a mix of online and in-store specials, including a 55-inch curved Samsung 4K UHD TV for $1298.
But CE still gets its own dedicated event at 8 p.m. Thanksgiving night, led by a 50-inch Vizio 4K UHD TV for $698, marked down $300, among other heavily discounted items.
Target: The No. 2 discounter jumpstarted the holidays with a pre- Black Friday online event requiring in-store pickup. It will prime the pump with another pre-sale, online and in stores, the day before Thanksgiving, and will open its doors Thanksgiving night at 6 p.m. The first few hundred in line will receive a gift card or coupon wrapped with a Christmas cracker, and a chance to vie for CE sale items like a 55-inch 1080p Westinghouse LED TV for $395, and Beats By Dre Solo HD headphones for $97.
Sears Holdings: Flying in the face of a fledgling closed-for- Thanksgiving retail movement, Kmart said it will remain open for 42 consecutive hours, from 6 a.m. Thanksgiving morning to midnight on Black Friday. Sears stores will remain closed for most of Thanksgiving Day, but will open an hour earlier, at 6 p.m. Thursday evening, and will remain open through Friday night.
