Retailers worked hard to attract shoppers to stores on Black Friday, offering in-person deals meant to counter the ease of shopping by phone on Amazon.
A better economy and colder weather helped, to be sure. But stores have also tried to improve the store experience and offer better service. They've also made a big push toward offering store pickup for online orders, hoping to get people to pick up more items. But they're fighting a circumstance in which online leader Amazon is the first and only stop for many shoppers.
So they're getting creative with the deals.
Victor Moore said he arrived about two hours ahead of Best Buy's 8 a.m. opening and scored one of the about 14 "doorbuster" deals on a 55-inch Toshiba smart TV for $280, a $220 savings. Moore said he's done some online shopping, but the allure of in-store-only deals drew him out from behind the computer.
"This is the first successful doorbuster that I've ever been a part of," Moore said. "I've been in lines before, but never actually got the items that I was waiting for."
Annette Peluffo usually avoids Black Friday and buys online. But a $250 gift card reward for buying an iPhone 8 plus at a Target store was hard to resist. She plans to use the money to buy toys for her nephews and nieces in the coming weeks. "I just came here for the iPhone. I am not going to any other store," she said.
Still, Black Friday isn't what it used to be. It has morphed from a single day when people got up early to score doorbusters into a whole month of deals. That has thinned out the crowds. And brick-and-mortar stores face plenty of challenges.
With the jobless rate at a 17-year-low of 4.1 percent and consumer confidence stronger than a year ago, analysts project healthy sales increases for November and December. The National Retail Federation trade group expects sales for that period to at least match last year's rise of 3.6 percent and estimates online spending and other non-store sales will rise 11 to 15 percent.
But analysts at Bain say Amazon is expected to take half of the holiday season's sales growth.
Amazon said Friday that Thanksgiving continued to be one of its busiest shopping days, with orders through its app up over 50 percent from a year ago. Overall, online sales on Black Friday rose 18. 4 percent to $640 million, from a year ago, as of Friday morning, says Adobe Analytics. Thanksgiving generated a total of $2.87 billion in online spending, up 18.3 percent from a year ago, the data firm said.