BANG FOR YOUR BUCK

More stores celebrate retail event earlier to help shoppers beat crowds, bag bargains

- Chantal Sajan

Black Friday, an eagerly anticipated annual retail event, is being celebrated early in Singapore, as well as around the world.

While Black Friday 2024 stretches from Nov 29 to Cyber Monday on Dec 1, online and physical stores are not waiting till the end of the month to roll out their big-ticket bargains, a hallmark of Black Friday shopping.

Changing consumer trends over the last few years indicate that sales previously set aside for a single day or the weekend after Thanksgiving Day in the United States have slowly expanded into the lead-up to the actual holiday, as well as a few days after.

This lets consumers bag early-bird deals ahead of the Black Friday weekend crowds.

In the US, Black Friday in 2024 has been dubbed "Black November", as price markdowns started a week earlier at the nation's biggest retailers, according to US newspaper reports.

In Singapore, Amazon announced a 12-day online shopping blitz starting from Nov 21.

Some of Singapore's top department stores, such as Metro, Takashimaya and Best Denki, have deals that end as late as on Dec 3, after Cyber Monday.

This is the time of year when shoppers can expect "sticker joy" instead of sticker shock on expensive household items such as refrigerators, air-conditioners and furniture.

Since June, market watchers have been upbeat about the year-end retail performance.

Singapore's overall retail sales in 2024 grew 2 per cent in September compared with a year ago, according to data released on Nov 5 by the Singapore Department of Statistics (Singstat). Excluding vehicle sales, Singstat reported that retail sales slipped 1.4 per cent compared with September 2023.

But the performance surpassed estimates by private-sector financial analysts, who earlier said that September 2024's retail sales would grow 1.8 per cent year-on-year, according to business media giant Bloomberg.