NEW YORK — Retailers worked hard to attract shoppers to stores on Black Friday, offering in-person deals meant to counter the ease of shopping by phone on Amazon.
A better economy and colder weather helped, to be sure. But stores have also tried to improve the store experience and offer better service. They’ve also made a big push toward offering store pickup for online orders, hoping to get people to pick up more items. But they’re fighting a circumstance in which online leader Amazon is the first and only stop for many shoppers.
So they’re getting creative with the deals.
Victor Moore said he arrived about two hours ahead of Best Buy’s 8 a.m. opening in Nashville and scored one of the about 14 ‘‘doorbuster’’ deals on a 55-inch Toshiba smart TV for $280, a $220 savings. Moore said he’s done some online shopping, but the allure of in-store-only deals drew him out from behind the computer.
‘‘This is the first successful doorbuster that I’ve ever been a part of,’’ Moore said. ‘‘I’ve been in lines before, but never actually got the items that I was waiting for.’’
Locally, indoor and outdoor shopping centers reported brisk business right from the day’s start.
At South Shore Plaza, shoppers — as usual — were waiting for the doors to open at 12:01 a.m., said Ashley Seldhouse, the Braintree mall’s director of marketing and business development. Parking lots were packed nearly all day, she said.
Issie Shait, senior vice president of property management for New England Development, said sales at the company’s CambridgeSide Galleria were up 9 percent from last year’s Black Friday. There also were large crowds at other retail locations operated by New England Development, Shait said.
“I was in University Station [in Westwood] this morning, early, and Target had several hundred people waiting in line before the store even opened,’’ she said.
The story was similar at Northshore Mall in Peabody, according to general manager Mark Whiting.
“Traffic’s been amazing, right at 12:30 when we opened,’’ he said. “It went all the way out from my food court entrance to the curb, which is quite a distance.’’
By Friday afternoon, Whiting was exhausted, but in a good way.
“You don’t mind running around all day on a day like today,’’ he said. “It’s been about as good as it gets, to be honest with you.’’
The turnout at area malls and other shopping centers, Shait said, shows that there’s still a large market for brick-and-mortar retail.
“The customer really wants to have an experience when they come into any center or any store,’’ she said.
Still, Black Friday isn’t what it used to be. It has morphed from a single day when people got up early to score doorbusters into a whole month of deals.
With the jobless rate at a 17-year-low of 4.1 percent and consumer confidence stronger than a year ago, analysts project healthy sales increases for November and December. The National Retail Federation trade group expects sales for that period to at least match last year’s rise of 3.6 percent and estimates online spending and other non-store sales will rise 11 to 15 percent.
‘‘The consumer still likes to go to the stores,’’ said Charles O’Shea, Moody’s lead retail analyst. ‘‘I’ve seen a lot of traffic. Yes. There’s going to be a lot of online shopping. But I think the brick and mortar stores have done a nice job so far in attracting shoppers.’’
Globe correspondent Rowan Walrath contributed to this report.
