What are the best stores for Black Friday sales?

If you read my newsletter (sign up here if you haven’t seen it yet), you know I advised consumers to start their Black Friday shopping for several weeks ago.

My advice today is to keep comparison shopping and add some of the stores that WalletHub.com recommends as the best, and of course, leave those at the bottom of its list until last.

Last year’s Black Friday sales drew 66.5 million Americans to shop in person and 88 million to shop online.

With the crush of shoppers, I’ll be shopping online. I’m hoping to get some money off on a new Apple desktop. However, Apple doesn’t often discount its products and when it does, the discount is small.

WalletHub surveyed nearly 4,000 deals from 16 of the biggest U.S. retailers’ 2022 Black Friday ad scans to identify the stores offering the biggest discounts in various product categories such as “Appliances,” “Jewelry,” and “Toys.” Ad scans are everything from PDF files to digital catalogs and deal pages on retailers’ websites. They’ve replaced physical ads that shoppers received in the mail.

Here are some highlights from the WalletHub report “2022’s Best Places to Shop on  Black Friday”:

Best Black Friday Retailers – Average Percent Discount
1. JCPenney – 64.71 percent	6. Lenovo – 40.67 percent
2. Belk – 64.23 percent	7. Target – 32.87 percent
3. Macy’s – 53.05 percent	8. Big Lots – 32.86 percent
4. Office Depot and OfficeMax – 49.93 percent	9. Academy Sports + Outdoors – 31.10 percent
5. Kohl’s – 44.23 percent	10. The Home Depot -- 30.90 percent

Next on the list are Newegg, Walmart, BJ’s, Amazon, Best Buy, and Costco, with Costco’s in last place with an average percent discount 16.8 percent.

The overall average discount for Black Friday is 37 percent, according to WalletHub. Consumers should aim for this discount amount or higher to avoid Black-Friday traps, it advises.

The “Apparel & Accessories” category has one of the biggest shares of discounted items, 21.09 percent of all offers, compared to the “Furniture” category with the smallest at 3.73 percent.

Good luck with your Black Friday shopping. And, don’t forget that basic of personal finances – keep comparing prices for the big savings.

Comments

[Laurie Stone]

As someone who studiously avoids Big Box stores in general, let alone the craziest shopping day of the year, I still found it interesting to see the savings for each retailer. I'm sure many people will need this list!

[Rebecca Forstadt Olkowski]

I almost always find good deals at Macy's throughout the year. And Target is my go-to for most household and personal items.

[Rita]

Yes, before the pandemic, I was a frequent shopper at Macy's. Its sale racks are very good. I like Nordstrom's Rack, too, but they don't have one in my community.

[Diane]

Wow! Going now to see if WalletHub also applies to Canada online! (One can always access, but often, shipping to Canada is non-existent!)

[Rita]

Hi Diane,

It varies. Some stores, such as Walmart, try to keep the prices in Canada the same as in the United States.

It's funny that you mentioned shipping to Canada. When I wrote a consumer action column for The Anchorage Times, I had a complaint that a consumer was being told he'd have to pay foreign shipping when he ordered from Neiman Marcus because he lived in Alaska. The man said he'd been fighting the "foreign country" battle for years. When I wrote about it in my column and sent him a copy, it made the local news.

[carol c]

There were some surprises on this list

[Rita]

Yes, that JCPenney was at the top and Costco at the bottom was a surprise. However, in thinking about it, Costco has rock-bottom prices because it makes most of its money off memberships so that's probably why it's Black Friday deals are less.