Will Walmart's 'Black Friday Deals for Days' change holiday shopping habits?

On Wednesday, Walmart announced that it is 'reinventing' Black Friday shopping experience by launching "Black Friday Deals for Days", by expanding the once one-day event into three. Yahoo Finance Editor-at-Large Brian Sozzi joins The Final Round to break down what the move means for e-commerce and big box retailers.

Video Transcript

JEN ROGERS: Welcome back to "The Final Round." As we discussed, yesterday was the kickoff for Amazon Prime Day. Amazon right now off some 2%. But this is the kickoff, we are told, now for the holiday seasons and holiday shopping. Yes, it's already here, not even Halloween. I'm not kidding you.

Brian Sozzi is joining us. He's going to tell you the same thing. But he's got details on how Walmart is going to be competing this holiday season. So what is Walmart going to pull out here to try and get us to all shop there and maybe even in person, right?

BRIAN SOZZI: Well, Jen, Walmart, what they have here is they've just ripped their bazooka right out of their back pocket. And they're going to try to take down so many other retailers in the month of November with three Black Friday sales events.

And you have to take a step back and think, Walmart, what took you so long to do this? And they are loath to say it. They do not want to say that Black Friday is dead. It is dead. It's gone. Black Friday has moved to October. And now November will be owned by Walmart.

I think it makes a lot of sense. They have to do this. You cannot have crowds of people in your store on the day after Thanksgiving during a pandemic. This should have been done years ago.

JEN ROGERS: Really? Why would they have done this years ago? Things were going so well for them. Everyone's crowding in those stores.

BRIAN SOZZI: The past few years-- they had an incident several years ago where somebody got trampled and, I believe, died in front of their store. You can't have that right now. And the crowds have lessened the past four years. You know, they've worked hard to improve their crowd control. They put a lot of gates out in front of their stores.

But you cannot mess around with this stuff anymore. Now they will be closed on Thanksgiving. And last year, the crowds weren't what they were. A lot of people have been buying online. But you cannot run that risk during a pandemic, seeing all these people trying to go into Walmart, trying to buy a $1 50-inch flat screen television. It's not going to work this year.

Ultimately, it'll probably work out good. You just shift all that business online, shift the-- get the shopping done early, and you don't have to worry about last minute shopping-- expensive last minute shopping come December.

DAN ROBERTS: Yeah, guys, our guest yesterday, the retail analyst from Salesforce was saying the same, that retailers actually will embrace the idea of Black Friday being deemphasized. And as Brian just said, you know, Brian's pointing out the safety reasons why, you know, no one really wants to have a lot of people lined up at a physical store amid the pandemic.

I also just think that to the average consumer, we might find out that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are just less appealing. Or there's less of a sense of urgency because people have been shopping online the whole pandemic, ordering things as soon as they need them.

In many cases, there have been deals being offered. Amazon Prime Day being in October contributes to that pull forward. And I just think that it sort of deemphasizes the idea of that must buy on this weekend because that's when all the deals will be.

All of these sort of effects are combining to create a perfect storm that, I think, might, indeed-- I don't want to say for sure. You know, never say never, but contribute, finally, to the killing off of Black Friday, at least the Black Friday as we know it in the past, that one-day, must-buy-on-that-day, line-up-in-stores, sleeping bags and tents shopping bonanza. And I think that's probably a good thing. People said for years, when will Black Friday go away? The pandemic might have actually finally done that.