Black Friday Shoppers Don’t Plan On Heading Out Thanksgiving Night, Study Finds

Yesterday we revealed the Walmart Black Friday Ad for 2012, and, in that post, we explained that the company would begin its sales at 8 pm on Thanksgiving Day. Walmart is not alone in its attempt to lure in early shopper. Also expected to do the same are Target, Kmart, Best Buy, and others. Unfortunately for those retailers and many others, shoppers may not be prepared to head out early this BF shopping season.

Survey firm Ipsos Public Affairs teamed with Offers.com to examine the attitude shoppers have towards extremely early bird Thanksgiving deals, online shopping for Black Friday, and other aspects of holiday shopping in 2012.

The study found that customers are willing to spend more money this year; however, only 6 percent of shoppers plan to spend that money on Thanksgiving night. The survey also found that only 18 percent of shoppers plan to visit traditional brick and mortar stores for this year’s Black Friday sales.

Why are shoppers gravitating away from Black Friday? Offers.com found that 36 percent of shoppers have been seeking deals all throughout the year. The study also found that 19 percent of shoppers will complete their Christmas shopping just one week before Christmas.

Here are the study’s findings in regards to Black Friday buying in 2012:

> 57 percent of respondents who plan to shop on Black Friday plan to shop primarily in stores, 31 percent to do so both online and in stores, and 11 percent to do so primarily online.

> 21 percent start Black Friday planning right after Halloween, 32 percent begin their planning one week before, and 40 percent wait until Thanksgiving to plan for Black Friday shopping.

> Many Black Friday shoppers plan to start early in the day, with 50 percent planning to shop at stores between midnight and 6 am.

This survey might help explain why Amazon has already started offering a month long Black Friday portal. As I reported earlier this week, the Amazon portal allows customers to find new deeply discounted deals every day through Cyber Monday. Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Meijer, and other big box retailers have also begun to offer deep discounts early and more often in recent years.

Many companies, Walmart included, have also begun to use their web portals to entice users with deep discounts, site-to-store offers, and other incentives to shop online with added convenience.

According to Offers.com, customers are gravitating to the web in large part because of online shopping coupon usage. Here is the online shopping portals study regarding online coupons:

“In 2011, 16% of adults answered that they always use online coupons and deals, yet this year that percentage has dropped to just 10%.”

Among the survey’s other findings:

> 34 percent of parents with children under 18 are most likely to always look for coupons when shopping online, or look for coupons most of the time, versus 18 percent of shoppers without children.

> 36 percent of consumers claim that they never look for online coupons or deals when shopping online, and 30 percent say they haven’t used any type of online or in-store savings opportunity in the past 30 days (e.g. loyalty cards/in-store promotions, printable or online coupons, etc.).

> 23 percent of consumers find online coupons and/or coupon codes primarily through emails from their favorite retailer or the website that they are purchasing from; 19 percent search for coupons using a search engine like Google, Yahoo, or Bing; and 10 percent rely on an online coupon or daily deal website.

Ipsos Public Affairs and Offers.com conducted several surveys on October 4-8, 2012 and September 8-13, 2011. The telephone surveys included 1,001 adult respondents over the age of 18.

You can find the full results here.