How Walmart Won Black Friday

The general buzz this morning is that Walmart "won" Black Friday. Whether that actually matters to anything long or medium-term is up for debate, but that seems to be the consensus of traders and analysts.

Citi's retail guru Deborah L Weinswig put together a cool table breaking down the major retailers, and scoring them across a range of measures like execution, store traffic, customer experience, and so forth. As you can see (click to enlarge) Walmart was the big winner.

So how did Wal-Mart do it?

It seems to be a contribution of macro and micro factors.

On the macro side, Weinswig notes that gas prices have come down sharply in the last 4 weeks, creating some relief for low-end shoppers, who are most impacted by gas.

As for the micro-execution side, Weinswig explains what Walmart did to win

Opening 8PM This Year vs. 10PM Last Year; one-hour guarantee on wishlist electronics; online-only special access for customers who sign up for email, like the Facebook page, or download the mobile app; Emerson 32" LCD TV $148 This Year vs. $188 Last Year

Weinswig's runners up for Black Friday performance were Target and JC Penney.

SEE ALSO: Here's the excuse for why Black Friday sales were down 2% overall >



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