Wallethub.com gave Americans one more reason to be grateful this year on Thanksgiving – “2014’s Best & Worst Retailers for Black Friday Deals.” The well-known personal finance site released this week a Black Friday 2014 best deals list containing the best Black Friday discounts and retailers.
JCPenney is top of the list with best average discount (65.44%), while Amazon, Costco, BigLots are at the bottom with their 26.10%, 25.24%, respectively 21.14% average discounts. Other top 3 retailers by average discount are Macy’s (53.52%) and Rite Ad (53.34%). Wal-mart fans will have to think twice if it worth the effort fighting the crowds on Black Friday, since their favorite discount retailer has one of the lowest deals on the list – 32.16 percent.
Wallethub has conducted its study on 22 of the largest US retailers by analyzing 5,525 of their Black Friday advertisements for various products ranging from computers & phones, apparel & accessories, appliances & consumer electronics to books, movies, music and toys.
The Wallethub’s team is enthusiastic and says the US economy is on the mend, since consumers’ confidence is boosting. According to a recent Accenture survey, 66.67 % of the US consumers plan to go on shopping this Black Friday compared with 55% last year, and 44 % in 2007.
In order to make its info easy to digest, Wallethub categorized the deals and discounts into 10 categories of goods. The most deals by category are under the “Toys” section (25.90%), followed by “Apparel & Accessories” (16.04%) and “Computers & Phones” (10.39%). The fewest deals by category are under “Consumer Packaged Goods” (1.30%) and “Furniture” (3.91%).
The top 3 discounts by category are “Jewelry” (58%), “Books, Movies & Music” (52%), and “Apparel & Accessories” (48%), while the lowest discounts occur under “Appliances” (36 %), “Toys” (31%) and “Computers & Phones” (30%).
Under the “Best Black Friday Discounts” section tops Sears with a 69% deals in “Apparel & Accessories”, Office Depot with 40.63% deals in “Computers & Phones”, Macy’s with 65.29% deals in “Computers & Phones” and 59.47% in “Consumer Packaged Goods”; while, Kohl has the richest array of deals in “Toys” (48.18%) and “Furniture” (59.60%), Kmart in “Jewelry” (78.75%) and JCPenney in “All Other Product Category” (68.68%).
The best discounts for “Apparel & Accessories” come from Sears (69%), JCPenney (62.62%), and Macy’s (62.34%). Office Depot and OfficeMax has the best discounts for “Computers & Phones” (40.63%). Macy’s has the best offers in “Consumer Electronics”, JCPenney has the best discounts for “Appliances”. Kohl has the best offer in “Furniture” (59.60%), while Wal-Mart and Target have the best deals for “Books, Movies and Music” – 62.49%. and 60.74%.
The researchers conducting the Wallethub study are business expert Rajari Srinivasan, Deborah Owens, associate professor of marketing, Mathew Curtis, clinical assistant professor, Tahira K. Hira, p
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