Retailers aren’t waiting to offer Black Friday deals

The day after Thanksgiving, also known as Black Friday, is no longer the kickoff for holiday bargains. In fact, several prominent multichannel retailers, including J.C. Penney, Sam’s Club and Best Buy are promoting Black Friday sales more than a week in advance. Dell and other retailers are extending Black Friday offers via e-mail.

Some of the deals, are tailored to Black Friday-like, door buster sales at specific times. For instance, both J.C. Penney and Sears plan sales tomorrow starting at 7 a.m. (the J.C. Penney sale ends at 1 p.m., the Sears sale ends at 12 p.m.). Sam’s Club will preview its sale Monday via e-mail and text messages, and allow shoppers to purchase the featured items two days later, the day before Thanksgiving on the web. Other retailers, like Best Buy are already offering a condensed version of their Black Friday offers both in-store and on the web.

Several web-only retailers, including VistaPrint Ltd., Newegg Inc. and CircuitCity.com, have offered previews or Black Friday offers to customers on their e-mail lists. For instance, Newegg sent an e-mail Nov. 13 alerting customers to “Early Black Friday Deals: Don’t Wait, Early Black Friday Deals May Not Come Back.” Those offers included a Toshiba 32-inch HDTV for $329.99 and a Samsung DVD burner for $28.99.

Consumers increasingly are using Internet search engines to seek out Black Friday and Cyber Monday (the Monday after Thanksgiving) deals, perhaps conditioned by increasing use of the terms by retailers. Searches on Google for “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday,” as well as related phrases such as “Black Friday laptop deals,” “Target Black Friday” and “Black Friday Ads 2009,” have increased 40% this year over last year, says Google Inc. Searches for coupon and coupon-related offers are also up more than 20% year over year.

“Retailers are aware that they need to be extremely promotional,” says John McAteer, head of retail for Google. “It’s probably always been this way during the holiday season, but now it’s the case more than ever.”