TV Confusion, Weather Cramp Wal-Mart Comps

Using “pull tags” to sell television sets on “Black Friday” apparently hurt sales nationwide for Bentonville-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc., said Daniel Barry, a managing director and retail analyst with Merrill Lynch Global Securities Research & Economics Group in New York City.r

“Wal-Mart was a little bit weaker [in its overall sales increase] this year because of the way they sell television sets, requiring customers to pick up tickets this year instead of picking up television sets and carrying them around the store,” Barry told the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal. r

Wal-Mart was trying to make TV shopping easier for customers. At each store, a Wal-Mart employee gave “pull tags” to customers who wanted to buy TVs so they wouldn’t have to lug heavy television sets around the stores in carts.r

“Wal-Mart commented that many customers erroneously concluded that Wal-Mart was out of TVs when they did not see the TV display,” according to a research report by Barry and two other analysts at Merrill Lynch. r

Barry said warm, wet weather in the East and cool, dry weather in the West also hampered Wal-Mart’s sales on the day after Thanksgiving, which is traditionally the fourth busiest shopping day of the year (accounting for 10.1 percent of sales last year). It was dubbed “Black Friday” because it used to mark the day when retailers turned a profit for the year and shifted to black ink in their ledgers. r

Wal-Mart reported sales of $1.52 billion nationwide on “Black Friday.” That’s a 6.3 percent increase over $1.43 billion a year ago.r

Same-store sales at Wal-Mart were up between 1 and 2 percent for “Black Friday” this year, the Merrill Lynch report stated. That’s a considerable drop from last year, when Wal-Mart had a 5 to 7 percent increase in comps on a sales increase of 14 percent (compared to a sluggish “Black Friday” in 2001).r

Merrill Lynch predicted Wal-Mart’s sales for the entire month of November to be up 3 to 4 percent, at the lower end of the company’s plan, which was 3 to 5 percent.r

Wal-Mart was scheduled to officially release its monthly sales numbers on Dec. 4, which was after deadline for this issue of the Business Journal.r

Barry said he’s still expecting good weather around Christmas and predicting the second best Christmas in a decade.