Retailers Are Cranking Up The Holiday Markdowns

With holiday shopping kicking into high gear, many retailers are rolling out deeper discounts to win consumers’ business. Median discounts across top retailers during Thanksgiving weekend increased by 5 percentage points to 16 percentage points over 2015, according to Boomerang Commerce, a provider of retail pricing data. Target offered a median discount for products listed on the first page of its Black Friday deals web page of 43 percent, an increase from 27 percent last year. Discounts for rival Walmart’s similarly promoted items rose from 28 percent to 33 percent, according to Boomerang. Smaller retailers are also getting in on the markdown action. Urban Outfitters had a buy-one-get-one-50-percent-off offer at its flagship stores for all apparel during the Thanksgiving holiday period, according to a client note from Wedbush Securities. The trendy retailer had discounts of 30 percent to 40 percent last year on items that were on clearance. “It’s more promotional than last year,” said Boomerang CEO Guru Hariharan, a former Amazon and eBay executive. “Every single year in the past 10 to 15 years, we’ve seen this trend of revenues during the holiday season going up … but with profits declining.” Read more at CBS News.