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    Thanksgiving Weekend Shopping Highlights 2004

    1. Of those who planned to shop Thanksgiving weekend, 31.3% did not shop any of the three days.
    2. Most shoppers, 87.9%, had finished by early afternoon on Friday.
    3. For both 2003 and 2004, 84.7% and 83.5% shopped for the early bird specials on Friday.
    4. This year, discount stores, particularly Wal-Mart, were the big loser on Friday with only 30.4% shopping there first on Friday compared to 41.3% shopping there first in 2003.
    5. Electronics stores were the biggest winners getting 20.9% to shop there first compared to only 7.3% a year ago.
    6. The department stores, particularly JCPenney and Sears saw solid increases with 22.2% going there first compared to 20.0% last year.
    7. Saturday and Sunday shoppers noticed the stores were not that busy with 24.7% expressing that opinion which is the highest number we have recorded in the seven years we have asked that particular question.
    8. The big winners on Saturday and Sunday were the department stores, driven by JCPenney and Sears both offering early bird specials again on Saturday Department store shopping on these two days was at a 23.9% level compared to 17.3% last year.
    9. Again the discount stores were the big losers on Saturday and Sunday with only 21.8% shopping there first compared to 32.3% last year for those two days.
    10. These Thanksgiving weekend shoppers are not big Internet buyers with only 10.3% buying anything on the Internet in the month of November. Since 1999 only 12.0% have shopped the Internet for the month of November.
    11. When asked if they saw enough discounts to spend more than they planned to spend, 45.3% said no. This is the biggest negative response since we have been asking that question.
    12. Retail stores need to watch out how much they can cut back on Christmas decorations in their stores. Only 63.0% said they felt stores were decorated as much as in years past and of those who said "no," 23.3% said they would spend less and those spending less were the most affluent who buy the big ticket items at Christmas.

    This survey was conducted on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and is a sample of those who said they were shopping this Thanksgiving weekend. This study has an error factor of +/-4.5%.