Happy Shopping Day

On Thanksgiving, instead of just eating turkey and watching football, some eager shoppers will be heading to the mall as stores like Wal-Mart, Ann Taylor, Target, and others open their doors on what was one of the last nonworking holidays.

Retailers are being more aggressive this year as they try to capitalize on early shoppers who are looking for deals even before Black Friday. And part of the reason they’re forcing employees to come in on a holiday traditionally spent with family, is because they think that in order to win, they have to be open for business.

“Those in the e-commerce space already know the importance of being open for business on Thanksgiving,” says Fiona Dias, executive vice president at GSI Commerce, an e-commerce and interactive marketing firm in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. “We never got a break that day and traditional stores are just now catching up. They’re realizing that if they cater to the people who don’t want to sit around eating and sitting in front of the television, they might make a sale."

But there’s a down side to what could become an annual trend. “Those retailers who are going to be open on Thanksgiving Day are likely to see a drop in their Black Friday business,” says Laura Conrad, president of Los Angeles-based online retailer and comparison site PriceGrabber.

Bob Duffy, leader of FTI Consulting’s Retail Industry Practice, agrees. “Being open on Thanksgiving will take more dollars from Friday and Saturday sales and move those transactions into Thursday, but overall it’s not going to fundamentally increase a retailer’s overall weekend haul,” he says. “If you look at Black Friday, there’s a tradition of waking up early and standing in line with fellow seasoned shoppers. Cyber Monday has also become a tradition, but Thursday is fundamentally for families,” he says.

And while retailers may fear that keeping their doors closed that day will cost them in the end, retail experts point to the value of e-commerce. “Stores that have an online presence don’t necessarily need to be open in order to reach customers because in e-commerce you’re always open 24/7,” says Aaron Press, research director for Chase Paymentech’s Cyber Holiday Pulse Index , which tracks spending and transactions from November through January. Plus, online retailers already have Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals available. Sears’ site touts “Cyber Monday deals today,” and Macy’s is letting shoppers in early on Friday’s sales and values.

Despite the fanfare from the larger retailers, small businesses largely say that they plan to take Thursday off. For anyone even peripherally involved with retail, this is the one and only day they can take off until January as nearly every shop big or small institutes blackout days starting as early as October.

And given that thousands of smaller retailers plan to participate in the first-ever Small Business Saturday, focusing on the weekend, rather than Thursday, is a smarter move. (Click here for Portfolio.com's take on the Saturday shopping event, the brainchild of American Express.)

Smaller merchants prefer letting their employees take a breather and come to work refreshed for the onslaught that is expected after Thanksgiving and every other weekend from now until Christmas. “We see a peak and a kickoff to the season with Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but the busiest stretches happen in the week leading up to the last Saturday before Christmas,” say Press.

Ultimately those who are going to win are the businesses who can leverage their online and mobile platforms on Thursday while greeting customers with a friendly and helpful sales staff on Friday, says Duffy. “Rather than worry about whether or not to be open on Thursday, retailers should make sure that their staff is ready for Black Friday, that they’re trained in customer service and product knowledge because at the end of the day, whether we choose to buy from one retailer or another, it’s going to come down to the quality of the engagement between sales person and customer.”

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Romy Ribitzky is an associate editor at Portfolio.com.