Black Friday Deals

For retailers these days, there's no sense waiting for Black Friday to pour on sales and promotions, especially with the commerce department reporting consumer spending on food and retail was up in September, by one percent.

"It's not even Halloween yet. I'm concentrating on Halloween costumes and getting the pumpkins carved, not even thinking about Christmas yet" says Shopper Peggy Felt.

"Well if I honestly thought they were doing it to bring the deals out earlier ok, but I don't think they are. They're just merchandising earlier" adds Theresa McClary.

"I'd rather they wait until close to Thanksgiving" says Nadine Crockett.

Retailers around here are hoping to cash in on September's spike in consumer spending. According to the NYS Retail Council, the Capital Region tends to do better then the National average.

"You know we draw from such a large radius if you're a hundred miles away you'll still drive here because we have the mix of stores independent and national" says Ted Potrikus with the NYS Retail Council.

Unlike a decade ago don't expect stores to have a large inventory of items this season.

A smaller inventory allows retailers to offer lower prices, but there's a downside.

"It's a tighter inventory so if you do see something that you like and you think oh I'm going to put that aside because it will be 20% less a week from now, it might not be there."

On the other hand, know your limit.

"If I shop early then I tend to buy too much" Felt admits.

With deep discounts starting in October experts say whatever you do keep your receipt; it could come in handy come December.

"You know some stores will have a policy that if you buy something today and it goes on sale for a lower price down the road within a certain period of time you can get the difference" says Potrikus.

A whole new set of shopping rules for a struggling economy, keep your receipt, don't shop too early, or too late. For some it's too much to think about in October.

"It's still warm out; the leaves are on the trees."

For Felt, when the snow and cold weather arrives, she'll feel in the holiday shopping spirit. The Retail Council also tells CBS 6 layaway is back at most major retailers this year, another option for people who are trying to be more careful about using credit cards.

Given the state of the economy, almost half of consumers have been looking for deals throughout the year when shopping for those on their holiday gift list, while only 18 percent are planning to wait to shop on Black Friday or Cyber Monday, according to a telephone survey conducted among 1,000 U.S. adults by Ipsos Public Affairs commissioned by Offers.com.

Although holiday shoppers continue to turn to the Internet for research, a majority isn’t on the hunt for coupons or deals, the survey says.

The survey also found that 87 percent of respondents are planning to spend the same or less during the upcoming holiday season than they did in 2010, but only 48 percent plan to look for online coupons or coupon codes to stretch their holiday spending dollars before making a purchase.

Other highlights from the survey asked specifically about holiday shopping plans include:

• 52 percent of respondents spend more than an hour researching the best price for each holiday purchase, while 7 percent of consumers report to spend more than 6 hours researching each purchase they make for the holidays.
• 27 percent have been keeping their eye on online specials and daily deals, and 50 percent turn to newspaper or magazine coupons for savings.
• 69 percent of holiday shoppers would prefer to shop in a retail store rather than online if the merchandise and deals were the same, while 47 percent said they would shop online if the deals were better than in stores.

“With a majority of U.S. consumers being not likely to look for online coupons or coupon codes when they shop this holiday season, millions of consumers may let savings pass them by,” said Steve Schaffer, CEO of Offers.com.

“Online shopping can provide much better value, selection, and convenience than shopping at retail, and online coupons offer extra discounts that can’t be found elsewhere. The team at Offers.com makes it easy to save money and time while shopping at any time of the year, because we manually screen thousands of the best available offers and deals on a daily basis to ensure that they work.”

Offers.com provides consumers with  online coupons, coupon codes, offers, and deals from thousands of online stores. Offers.com also organizes deals and provides guidance around specific holidays and trends such as Halloween, Black Friday 2011 Deals, and Cyber Monday 2011 Deals.

Additional demographic findings of the holiday spending poll include:

• While just 16 percent of adults with a household income of $75,000 or more indicated that they were not at all likely to seek out online coupons or coupon codes, almost three times as many (44 percent) of those with a household income of$25,000 gave the same answer.
• 73 percent of respondents aged 18-34 would prefer to shop in retail stores if the merchandise and deals were the same, but if the deals were better online, 50 percent would shop online instead.
• Similar to other age groups, 51 percent of respondents aged 18-34 have used newspaper or magazine coupons in the last 30 days.