Black Friday: First With Freebies
Christmas 2008 might shape up to be the season of the freebie.
Mall owners and retailers gave potential consumers generous gifts on Black Friday, the traditional start of the holiday retail season, which fell on Nov. 28. The unprecedented freebies were all in the name of getting an increasingly reticent customer into stores.
For the first time in its more than 25-year history, Los Angeles luxury mall Beverly Center offered free parking throughout its five-level parking lot for the whole day on Black Friday. For another first, the Beverly Center treated 500 customers who arrived from 8 to 9 a.m. on Black Friday to a pancake breakfast made by the Grand Lux Café restaurant.
In San Diego, Fashion Valley retail center gave branded tote bags filled with goodies such as candy cane-flavored lip balm, energy bars and bottled water to the first 100 customers who lined up at the center’s guest-services kiosk at 5 a.m. on Black Friday.
Gap Inc.’s Old Navy division also got a chance to play Santa when employees gave out free Samsung Pebble MP3 players to the first 100 customers who spent more than $20 at many of its locations on Black Friday.
The freebies come at a hard time for retailers. On Dec. 1, the National Bureau of Economic Research, a private, nonprofit group of economists based in Cambridge, Mass., announced the American economy has been in recession since December 2007.
Holiday sales in Southern California are forecast to be weak, said Jack Kyser, chief economist of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. At best, Los Angeles’ 2008 holiday sales season, or the months of November and December, is likely to see a mere 1 percent increase in sales over last year. There’s also a chance it will decline 1 percent, Kyser said.
Despite the weak forecasts, Janet LaFevre, the senior marketing director of the Glendale Galleria retail center in Glendale, Calif., said she was cautiously optimistic about this holiday season. “We have great retailers, and they know what they are doing,” she said.
San Diego's Fashion Valley was just one of the retail centers experimenting with freebies to attract shoppers on Black Friday. The mall distributed 100 branded tote bags. Old Navy distributed MP3 players with a purchase.
