The news: Big-box retailers are bucking the decade-long trend of opening stores on Thanksgiving evening as an early kickoff for Black Friday.
- Target said it will make Thanksgiving Day closures a permanent policy.
- Other major stores like Walmart, Best Buy, and The Home Depot will close again this year but haven’t committed to a future plan yet, per the Wall Street Journal.
What this means: Early openings likely began as a way to get more consumers in stores to compete with the rising popularity of online shopping on platforms like Amazon. But now that these retailers have spent the pandemic beefing up their own ecommerce capabilities, many are finding the practice unnecessary.
While brick-and-mortar stores will still reign supreme on Black Friday itself, consumers are more open to shopping online on other days—including Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving Day ecommerce sales will see the highest growth of all Cyber Five days this year, rising 20.7% to $6.10 billion, per our estimates.