Holiday shopping season gets lukewarm start

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By Nicole Maestri

COLUMBIA, Maryland (Reuters) - The stores are open, the prices are marked down, but U.S. shoppers are buying sparingly at the start of the holiday shopping season as a contracting economy crimps budgets.

"Consumers are being very cautious about how much money they are spending," Stacey Widlitz, a retail analyst with Pali Capital said on Saturday. She visited stores like Best Buy Co Inc and Circuit City Stores Inc on Friday.

"I have very little confidence that the sales number will be up year-over-year," for total holiday sales, she said.

The three-day holiday shopping weekend after U.S. Thanksgiving Day has taken on added importance this year.

The country is seeking its way out of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, making the effort to drive Americans into stores a test of consumer sentiment.

Retailers can ring up 10 percent of their holiday sales in the days after Thanksgiving, and those that fail to lure shoppers face the prospect of slashing prices closer to Christmas, hurting profits.

After opening at pre-dawn hours on Friday, department store operator Kohl's began its sales at 6 a.m. on Saturday, while competitor J.C. Penney Co Inc opened at 8 a.m.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc touted discounts on digital cameras and laptop computers available only in its stores, while Toys "R" Us promised its "lowest prices of the season."

Widlitz said the Best Buy she visited in New York was mobbed in the early morning hours on Friday, but the rush of customers might not translate into strong sales or profits.

"Traffic, at least in the morning hours seemed to me was up year over year," she said, adding that customers were buying only the lowest-priced versions of merchandise at the time.

"In the afternoon, certainly we think purchasing dropped off significantly," she said.

'HIT-AND-RUN SHOPPER'

Britt Beemer of America's Research Group said on Friday that he saw shoppers carrying 25 to 40 percent fewer bags this year.

"If the item was there, they bought it. If it wasn't there, they left," said Beemer, calling this year's customer a "hit-and-run shopper."

Alice Hughes, 45, made the rounds in Maryland on Friday, stopping at a Target, Sears, J.C. Penney and Macy's Inc, buying items like a treadmill and leather coats for herself and her daughter. But she was not impressed with the prices and expected them to fall closer to Christmas.

"I think they're playing," she said of retailers. "They tell you they're marking down, but they're really not."

"They need more people to be out so they will probably lower prices," she said.

Consumer electronics, toys and clothing were the goods in highest demand at the start of the weekend, from flat-screen televisions to cashmere sweaters, according to the National Retail Federation.

Widlitz said she expected discount behemoth Wal-Mart to win shoppers this holiday because of its low prices.

Indeed, at a Wal-Mart store in Columbia, Maryland on Friday morning, the parking lot was full at 7:30 a.m. and customers stood in line 10 shopping carts deep to purchase flat-screen televisions, $8 jeans and $4 pajamas.

The frenzied bargain-hunting took a somber turn on Friday when a worker at Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, New York, died in a stampede by shoppers who broke down doors to enter the store at 5 a.m. EST (1000 GMT). Four others were hurt in what Wal-Mart called a "tragic" incident.

Meanwhile, mid-tier retailers like department store operator Macy's and specialty chains such as AnnTaylor Stores Corp are fighting to retain customers and eke out profits.

At Ann Taylor's LOFT chain on Friday, the retailer was offering 40 percent off its sale prices, and an additional 20 percent off on purchases rung up before noon.

In a sign of how much consumers have put the brakes on spending, November retail sales at U.S. chain stores open at least a year could fall 2.4 percent, or 7.1 percent excluding Wal-Mart, compared with 4 percent growth last year, based on analysts' forecasts compiled by Thomson Reuters.

(Reporting by Nicole Maestri; Additional reporting by Alexandria Sage in San Francisco, Editing by Sandra Maler)

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