Earlier Deals Whack Black Friday Numbers

Have retailers’ earlier and earlier deals each holiday season made Black Friday moot? Not quite. Some 87 million Americans still hit stores on Friday, according to a National Retail Federation (NRF) survey released on Sunday. But by ramping up holiday sales events more intensely than ever, and as early as the first week of November, retailers took a big bite of what's long been the busiest shopping weekend of the year. Total spending for the four-day weekend that started on Thanksgiving is expected to reach $50.9 billion, down 11.3 percent from last year's estimated $57.4 billion, according to NRF projections.