TV Deals at Discount Retailers Attract Shoppers

By Paul Gagnon, - Director, North American TV Research, DisplaySearch

Parking lots are getting full and hard to maneuver through.  Those unwilling to wake at ungodly hours are now coming out and looking for items the early birds left behind.  For the most part though, the excitement around electronics items has waned and people are shopping for smaller gift items at the electronics stores.

I made it to the opening of Costco at 9 am where approximately 150 people were lined up, shopping carts in hand.  As the door rolled up, shoppers made a beeline for the TV section.  Eight out of 10 shoppers’ carts were filled with Vizio TVs, which were featured prominently on end caps and bulk stacks.   Most were either 32″ or 55″.   In fact, the 55″ 1080p 120 Hz model from Vizio (the non-LED one priced at $1,449 before a $300 rebate) was extremely popular and more were constantly being rolled out to replace the aisle stack.

A return visit to several Best Buy locations revealed that the large inventory stack outs were shrinking, but still had plenty of stock left. By my estimates, and this is confirmed by reports from around the country, most of the sold units were name brands and the stock of inventory was a little more biased towards private label Dynex and Insignia.   There was a fairly good mix of large and small screen stock, and nothing stood out as being overly excessive in terms of inventory.

Overall, the traffic this Black Friday was similar to last year, but more heavily biased toward discount retailers like Target and Walmart, especially with the best deals (like 32″ LCD TVs for less than $250) being found at these lower priced retailers.