Shoppers Already Buying Up Best Holiday Deals

ATLANTA, Ga. -- This year, it's a buyer's market.

The 2009 holiday shopping season is well underway; retailers and customers did not wait for Thanksgiving to end and Friday to begin.

Cut-rate deals are everywhere in Target.

There's already a price war between Amazon.com and Wal-Mart.

And on 11Alive.com, some of the most popular destinations (since Monday) are lists of the price cuts that major retailers are. or will soon be, offering.

So imagine what it's going to be like in the stores before dawn on Friday.

"From a customer's perspective, Friday is going to be crazy, it's going to be great," said Emory University Economics Professor Tom Smith on Tuesday evening. "You're going to be able to get great deals."

Smith said retailers have never started so early being so aggressive cutting prices so deep, competing for the consumers' limited recession dollars.

"I don't know how businesses are going to make any money, because they're slashing prices to unprecedented amounts."

But many retailers are stocking less inventory, which means supplies are limited on many sale items as customers start early, racing to snap up the best deals.

"It is early," said one woman as she shopped, "but you have to come early to get the good stuff, before it runs out."

The National Retail Federation is expecting a decline in holiday spending this year of one percent. But the decline in 2008 was 3.4 percent.

The pressure on retailers to attract customers, Prof. Smith said, has probably never been more intense than it is this year.

"Customers are not going to be satisfied with just getting a pretty good deal," Smith said. "Customers really want the best deal possible," with coupons on top of sales prices, and promises to match anyone else's lower prices. "It's not enough to have ten percent off, it's got to be an additional 15 percent off of that.... They are looking at, you know, 'I might not have a job next month'" after the holidays.

In Atlanta, Omara Galvez was tempted Tuesday night, as she saw a sale price in one discount department store for "D.J. Hero."

"I want this," she said, as she lifted the box from the shelf for a closer look.

But she walked away without buying the game. For now.

"We don't want to hyper-consume," she said. "Because when you go through your budget at the end of the month, you're like, 'What did I do?' Get the things you need, you know?"

The toughest market in years for retailers.

One of the best for shoppers.