Recession? What recession?
As retailers and brands attempt to milk every penny they can out of customers, some folks are trying to get people shopping on Thanksgiving Day — even going so far as to name it “Mobile Thursday.”
To reach its conclusions, Digitas and Harris Interactive conducted an online survey earlier this month of 2,059 adults who own a smartphone or a tablet computer.
According to the results, 28 percent of survey respondents said they plan to shop on Thanksgiving. That number was even higher for respondents between the ages of 18 and 34. Roughly 40 percent of that age group indicated that they plan to use their mobile devices on Thanksgiving to do some form of holiday planning. Those activities could include making an actual purchase or gathering data for a safari to a brick-and-mortar mall on Black Friday, the day often viewed as the official start of the holiday shopping season.
Do you plan to do holiday shopping on Thursday? Of course, e-commerce makes it possible, but will you also go to stores that plan to open Thursday night? Is it risky for retailers to stay closed while their competitors open, or is there goodwill to be gained by giving workers an actual day off?
This year, as seems to be the case every year, many bricks-and-mortar retailers have the pressure on them. JC Penney, Best Buy, Sears, Kmart, Radio Shack — this is a crucial selling season for all of them.