With total holiday spending expected to reach $656 billion this year — up from nearly $631 billion in 2015 — the personal-finance website WalletHub conducted an in-depth analysis of 2016’s Best Stores for Black Friday.
WalletHub surveyed 8,000 deals from 35 of the biggest U.S. retailers’ 2016 Black Friday ad scans to identify the stores offering the biggest discounts in various product categories, such as “Appliances,” “Jewelry” and “Toys.”
Best Black Friday Retailers (Avg. % Discount):
1 Macy’s (63.35%)
2 Stage (62.81%)
3 JCPenney (62.79%)
4 Harbor Freight (62.58%)
5 Gordmans (61.59%)
6 Kohl’s (58.15%)
7 Shopko (55.55%)
8 Fred Meyer (49.70%)
9 Craft Warehouse (45.03%)
10 Sears (43.89%)
Wallet Hub also offers these key stats:
• Macy’s has the highest overall discount rate at 63.35 percent, whereas Big Lots has the lowest at 23.52 percent.
• The overall average discount for Black Friday is 39 percent. Consumers should aim for this discount amount or higher to avoid Black-Friday traps.
• The “Toys” category has the biggest share of discounted items, 28.26 percent of all offers, whereas the “Books, Movies and Music” category has the smallest at 0.93 percent
• Over 17% of items will actually be more expensive on Black Friday than they currently are on Amazon.com.
• Video games (software only) will offer the most value on Black Friday 2016 relative to their current prices, while jewelry is expected to be the worst deal.
• 11% of Black Friday deals are actually recycled from last year, per 2016’s Black Friday Freshness Report.
• Target, Netflix and Walmart top the list of 2016’s Best Gift Cards.
• Credit cards also have a number of little-known benefits that can really come in handy over the holidays, including price-drop protection, extended warranties and coverage for damaged or stolen items.
• 99% of store credit cards do not charge an annual fee, and the average card offering rewards in the form of discounts gives you more than 19% off your first purchase, according to the 2016 Store Card Landscape.
• All of the major retailers offering 0% financing use a dangerous feature called deferred interest, which has the potential to make holiday purchases up to 27.5 times more expensive than expected.