Black Friday sales up 0.3% to $ 10.7 billion

Black Friday sales were little changed, rising 0.3 percent, over last year, as the efforts of U.S. retailers to attract customers by opening false starts, ShopperTrak said.

Early Christmas sales and promotions boosted sales and traffic in the first two weeks of this month through November 13 by 6.1 percent and 6.2 percent respectively, ShopperTrak, said in a statement on its website web.

Shoppers across the country spent 10.69 billion U.S. dollars yesterday, Bill Martin, founder of Chicago-based firm ShopperTrak research, said in a statement. Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving in the U.S. and the traditional start of the Christmas buying season.

Hundreds of people queued at individual stores across the U.S. to take advantage of special offers as they face a slow economic recovery. Sears Holdings Corp. and Toys "R" Us Inc. began its "Black Friday" doorbuster "sales on Thanksgiving Day to appeal to consumers two years after purchasing off the enthusiasm from the recession.

Sears, the largest U.S. department store, beginning at 7 am with offers that include a 58 inch Panasonic plasma TV Corp. HD $ 1,044, 55 percent off its price listed at $ 2,299.

Open Thanksgiving

Toys "R" Us, the world's largest retailer of toy, opened earlier this year to accommodate customers who said they wanted to go shopping after the Thanksgiving dinner, said Chief Executive Jerry Storch . Employees in Times Square store in New York chain Santa hats distributed to nearly 1,500 guests lining up outside before the opening, said spokeswoman Jennifer Albano.

In 2009, Black Friday spending rose 0.5 percent to 10.66 billion U.S. dollars, compared with the previous year, according to ShopperTrak.

Analyst estimates for total sales of the holiday season ranging from a few changes to increases of up to 4.5 percent. Washington-based National Retail Federation forecast to rise 2.3 percent to 447.1 billion U.S. dollars after rising 0.4 percent last year and a fall of 3.9 percent in 2008.

The projections are consistent with a rebound in U.S. consumer spending this year when the economy began adding jobs. Consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of the country's economy, grew at a rate of 2.8 percent per year in the third quarter, the Commerce Department. That was the fastest since the last three months of 2006.