Flat-Panel TVs, Laptops, Blu-ray Players Loom as Black Friday Bait

Flat-panel TVs will be a top draw for Black Friday this year, presenting an “interesting phenomenon,” according to Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis for The NPD Group. “We've always seen really low-priced things do well,” he told Consumer Electronics Daily, but this year TVs have helped “turn that aside.” Historically, the leading product for Black Friday features “a lot of money off” on low-priced goods, he said. “Now we're seeing stuff at $300, $400 and $500 being a great deal and Black Friday doorbuster products,” he said.

Amid reports of high TV inventories going into Q4, Walmart is blowing out 19-inch Sansui LCD TVs for double-digit prices Friday, according to the store circular. A 60Hz 720p model will retail for $98 from 5 a.m. to 11 a.m., while supplies last, and an Emerson 32-inch LCD TV will be tagged $198. An HP laptop with 15-inch screen and 250GB hard drive is $298, and a similarly configured eMachines 15-inch laptop comes in at $198. Nintendo DS Lites will sell for $89 in limited quantities, Walmart said.

Beyond TVs, Baker said, consumers should expect more of the same from in-store Black Friday electronics deals this year. 2010 “could have been 2009, 2008 or 2005,” he said, since promotions have run at the same “fairly high level” the past few years. Baker doesn’t believe Black Friday is going to get “much bigger than it is already,” and he said online shopping has taken some excitement out of Black Friday. At the same time, online promotions “continue to be confusing” to consumers, who are unsure about quantities of sale items available online, when products go on sale and whether they can buy products at Black Friday sale prices online and then pick them up in stores, Baker said. “I would love to see more clarity around that and it would help us understand where we're going,” he said.

Despite the boost in pre-Thanksgiving promotions, and surveys finding that more people will do their Black Friday shopping online this year, Baker doesn’t see a weakening of the Black Friday in-store strategy. Retailers will continue to try to lure consumers into stores with competing “marketing schticks” and opportunities for differentiation, he said. “If everybody’s running 5 a.m. sales on Friday morning, a consumer can’t be at all of them,” he said. “Everybody trying to get their pound of flesh to get consumers in store.”

Beyond TVs, most Black Friday deals will involve “the usual suspects,” Baker told us. He said more Blu-ray deals will be evident “because they hadn’t been too available the last couple of years in terms of price.” Digital cameras, flash camcorders, and notebook computers will also see a lot of Black Friday action, he said. Notebooks have hit a pricing plateau, he said, and can’t go much lower than they are. “You'll see a lot of stuff between $250 and $300” but not below, because the margin has been slashed from the category, he said. “You're stuck there."

Best Buy’s Black Friday doorbuster deals include a Nintendo Wii Console with Wii Sports, Wii Sports Resort and Wii Remote Plus for $169, a $30 savings; a $99 Barnes & Noble Nook e-reader that’s $50 off the list price; a Samsung Fascinate phone listed as free with two-year activation, a $149 discount; a Sony VAIO laptop with 3GB memory and 320GB hard drive for $399, the saving not specified. Blu-ray players have been heavily discounted going into Black Friday, and Best Buy anted up with the $59 Toshiba BDX1100 Blu-ray player discounted by $40. Although the Panasonic TC-P50U2 1080p 50-inch plasma TV is out of the typical doorbuster price range at $699, it represents a hefty $300 saving from list. Each store has at least eight in stock, according to the online ad. Other doorbuster items have a minimum of 10-15 in stock, the ad said.

Hhgregg’s 20-30-percent-off Black Friday sale starts at 4 a.m. Friday and continues through Saturday, according to the store circular. Plasma TV prices begin at $369 for an unidentified 42-inch model, with a limit of one to a customer, and are followed by a 46-inch Panasonic plasma at $499 and a 50-inch model at $599, a saving of $200 on each. An unmarked DVD player, with a list price of $29, has a Black Friday price of $9.99, the same price as for a pack of 25 blank DVDs. An LG Blu-ray player is $59, down from $139 with discount and mail-in rebate. An HP laptop with 15-inch screen, AMD processor and 250GB hard drive comes in at $349. A 10-inch Asus netbook with 160GB hard drive is listed for $199. Additional TV prices include $199 for an LG LED LCD TV, $329 for a Samsung 32-inch LCD TV and $299 for a 32-inch Hisense LCD model. Hhgregg is offering 24 months no-interest financing on everything above $299, it said.

Notable Black Friday bundles at hhgregg include 3D packages combining a PS3 console with 46-and 55-inch 3D TVs discounted more than $1,000 each. The 46-inch TV/PS3 bundle comes in at $1,699 versus $2,798 list and the 55-inch bundle is priced $2,199, down from $3,798.

Baker of NPD said the industry will see less competition this year from retailers that aren’t usually in the CE market, such as Kohl’s and JCPenney. “A couple of years ago we were speculating that a lot of those companies would get into CE for Black Friday and be a lot more aggressive,” he said, but “it’s not happening at the same level.”