The coronavirus pandemic has reshaped the holiday shopping season with fewer people hitting stores on Black Friday and many retail chains holding the line on discounts because they are sitting on lean inventories.
Crowds were smaller this year than last at a Walmart Inc. store in upstate New York and at a shopping mall in New York City on Friday morning, with even Black Friday veterans saying they had made much more of their purchases online this year.
Dalla Paye, 56 years old, was on a mission to snag deals on specific items—in his case, a pair of headphones from a Best Buy Co. Inc. store. Nevertheless, Mr. Paye said he was mostly done with his holiday shopping, having made many purchases on Amazon . com Inc.’s website using his Prime subscription. “Whenever I need something, I just go to Amazon and buy it,” Mr. Paye said. “Or sometimes eBay . Whichever is cheaper.”
Just a handful of shops at the Queens Center Mall, including beauty retailer Sephora and jeweler Pandora, had short lines as people waited patiently to be let inside at limited numbers to observe social distancing. The mall was filled with shoppers last year.
With many chains staying closed on Thanksgiving Day, online shopping hit a new record for the holiday with sales increasing 22% from a year ago to $5.1 billion, according to Adobe Analytics, which measures sales on 80 of the top 100 U.S. retail sites. Adobe expects Black Friday online sales to rise between 20% and 42% from last year, reaching between $8.9 billion and $10.6 billion.
