Auburn, CA is different in many ways from the San Francisco Bay Area town that I live and work in. Aside from the obvious geographic differences, there are differences in lifestyle and income. According to various cost-of-living calculators available on the web, Auburn’s cost-of-living is about 78% of Walnut Creek’s (a suburb of San Francisco – where I live and work), 72.5% compared to San Francisco, and 98% of Roseville’s (a big suburb of Sacramento – and home of the giant Galleria shopping complex, just 20 minutes away from Auburn). And most of that differential is in housing costs. In short, it’s more rural. So it seemed like a good idea to do my 2012 Black Friday walk-about there, as a contrast to my prior years’ investigations in the shopping meccas of Walnut Creek, San Francisco, and Roseville.

Of course the “big ” news about this year’s Black Friday is that it seeped its way into Thanksgiving Day (causing the UK Guardian to dub it “Grey Thursday “), with some retailers deciding to open their doors at 8 PM on Thursday night. That included some of the big box stores that have come to Auburn too. For me, the notion of interrupting precious personal time with family to stand in line for a bargain on a commodity item (one that I’ll probably still be able to get on Friday at the same store, or just sign on to Amazon to get anytime) is not enough to pull me away from the holiday table. And I’m not alone – pollsters have found that after Christmas, Thanksgiving is Americans’ favorite holiday regardless of age group or gender. Perhaps that is why the NRF’s CEO Matthew Shay (perhaps engaging in a little cheerleading) said in a press release mid-day on Black Friday that, “like pumpkin pie and football, Thanksgiving Day shopping is quickly becoming a holiday tradition for millions of Americans “. It would be better for retailers if people don’t consider shopping on Thanksgiving Day as an interruption to their holiday traditions, but as a part of them.

All of this didn’t stop me from cruising HWY 49 (the famed “49’er Trail “) in Auburn at 8 PM to see how big the lines were. And sure enough, there were queues of cars in the parking lots at the newly re-opened Target Greatland and Best Buy stores, just to mention a couple of noteworthy retailers. The hardcore shoppers seemed ready to fight for those bargains. I went back to my daughter’s house for some pie.

Black Friday AM: Lots of Parking, Lots of Merchandise

In keeping with RSR’s Black Friday tradition, I trekked out early on Friday morning to fight for a parking space and wade into the crowds. But much to my great surprise, I didn’t have to fight for a parking space at all, and the crowds, although pleasing, were by no means overwhelming. It occurred to me in that moment that retailers may have taken the practice of creating a shopping frenzy with aggressive prices on commodity items and early hours too far, that in fact all they had done was spread the available market over a greater number of store hours – and tanking the already thin net profit of sale items sold in the process. Best Buy seemed to be doing fine, but there was still plenty of “stuff ” available; Target looked neat and well-stocked – there was no evidence of the kinds of fighting that someone videoed at a Walmart Store and posted on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5qRs2dBoK0) .

Well, this was semi-rural Auburn, after all, so I finally decided to do some serious shopping at the brand-new Tractor Supply Company store on HWY 49. The store is so new that employees wore name stickers (like the kind you get at meet‘n’greets) with their hand-written first names on their vests. Tractor Supply had made some concessions to the big box trend by opening its doors on Black Friday at 6 AM – but a store clerk told me that no one had to come in on Thursday (he was grateful to his employer for that). When I asked if there was a queue at 6 AM, he simply said, “nope! ” But the company did have a fair number of special holiday promotions, with everything from kid’s toy tractors, trucks, and barnyard scenes to clothing (great deals on Wrangler & Carhartt clothing and Ariat footwear) and horse food (not that great! A 50 lb. bag of Equine Senior horse feed had a Thanksgiving special price of $21.99, compared to the everyday price of $24.99 found at other local feed stores). The store was very well stocked, and there were plenty of employees on hand, but… like the other retailers in town, the parking lot was 1/3-empty and there were no frenzied flash mobs of shoppers.

What’s Happening

This week, there’s a lot of industry hyperbole about how successful this year’s “extended ” Black Friday was. But usually one of the most reliable scans of the market comes from the ShopperTrak survey, and on Sunday the company reported that people spent $11.2B at stores in the U.S., down 1.8% from last year’s totals. According to an Associated Press article, “this year’s Friday results appear to have been tempered by hundreds of thousands of shoppers hitting sales Thursday evening while still full of Thanksgiving dinner. ” In other words, retailers may have spent the extra labor and other SG&A money to achieve about the same level of sales as last year.

So how to explain all the headlines boasting of increased sales? In a word: “cyber “. According to a PCWorld report, “Data from online consumer analytics firm Experian Hitwise shows online traffic on the holiday increased 71 percent this year compared to the same day a year ago. It says the top 500 retail sites received more than 181 million total U.S. visits. Experian’s Matt Tatham wrote in a blog post that online traffic to the top retail sites has been up 8 percent on average for the holiday week. The most visited retail sites on Thanksgiving Day were Amazon, Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy and Sears. On Black Friday, they were Amazon, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Target and J.C. Penney Co. According to Experian Hitwise, on Black Friday this year the website that saw the biggest increase in traffic was the Apple Store at 99 percent growth. “

RSR partner Nikki Baird puts it this way in her “Black Friday ” piece: “what we are seeing is the last gasp of an old, store-based model, which is putting up a fight, no doubt, but will ultimately be determined to be completely irrelevant. ” I agree with that assessment. Whether it’s Auburn, Boston, Miami, or Denver, the message seems clear: retailers should put their efforts into lower cost-to-serve channels in the digital domain that don’t force consumers to get away from the holiday feast to wait for a store to open, and don’t require employees to lose holiday time with family. If my Black Friday walk-about in Auburn is indicative, only the really hardcore bargain hunters were out on Thursday night… and they can wait until 6 AM on Friday to get that deal of a lifetime. The rest of us can use our mobile devices while watching football… or eating another piece of pie.