Today is Black Friday; the day after Thanksgiving, the day which for years kicked off the festive shopping period, and often one of the days when the highest sales were seen in the US . However, in the last  couple of years, the advent of Thanksgiving shopping  – on which many retailers remained open, opened early and added special discounts -  and the  emergence of the “Christmas creep”,  elongated the  shopping  period. (No, the Christmas Creep is not some newly discovered monster, but the theory that Christmas shopping was spreading over a longer and longer period of time.)

According to  the National Retail Federation’s Consumer Holiday Spending Survey conducted by Prosper Insights and Analytics,   “56.6 percent of those celebrating the holidays had already started shopping by early November, up from 54.4 percent last year and 16 percent from the 49 percent who had started by this time in 2008, the first time NRF asked the question. This also marks the highest percentage seen in that timeframe.”

“Thanksgiving weekend shopping has evolved tremendously over the past few years and can no longer be seen as the ‘start’ of the holiday season, though there’s no question it’s still important to millions of holiday shoppers and retailers of all shapes and sizes,” said NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay. “There is a real sea change happening in retail when it comes to the how, when, where, and why of holiday shopping. Consumers today are looking for great prices and value-add promotions earlier than ever before, and retailers have answered these demands in several different ways already this holiday season.”

However, Shay added  that the season’s “best deals are yet to come” and that “there’s still plenty of shopping to be done over Thanksgiving weekend and in December when shipping promotions begin to ramp up”. He therefore concluded:   “I expect we’ll see shifts all season long as it relates to shopping patterns.”

What shouldn’t come as a surprise is that the study, when breaking down consumer patterns by age, said that “25 – 44 year olds have gotten out of the gates early. Specifically, 64.9 percent of 25-34 year olds and 62.1 percent of 35-44 year olds say they have already started shopping. Additionally, nearly six in 10 (58.4%) women have already started checking off their holiday lists, compared to 54.6 percent of men”.

Breaking it down by item, the study says that this holiday season, “six in 10 (60.3%) will purchase apparel or clothing accessories. Another 46.2 percent said they will purchase books, CDs, DVDs and/or video games, and 41.2 percent said they will buy toys. One in five will buy jewelry (21.8%) and 30.5 percent will buy food and/or candy.”

Meanwhile,  Marshal Cohen, Chief Industry Analyst  of the NPD Group, echoing a similar viewpoint,  said in his blog a couple of days ago: “ At the end of October, two-thirds of consumers told NPD that they planned to take advantage of holiday sales this year, and those sales have been plentiful since the first day of November.”

However, Cohen says according to online studies conducted by  NPD Group’s partner CivicScience, 57% of the people surveyed had not begun their holiday shopping till the Sunday before Thanksgiving. Hence Cohen’s opinion is: “Despite the pre-Thanksgiving holiday deals and the continuation of many stores opening on Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday hasn’t faded away, though it is graying.”

One thing is certain, this year analysts expect the patterns of season shopping to vary somewhat.