海角大神

Black Friday is huge for many stores, big and small. But for the past couple of years, two giant retailers have battled to dominate the shopping extravaganza with the best deals and the most customers: Amazon and Walmart.

Both have the scale and know-how to negotiate the cheapest prices and stock the most popular items. For Black Friday 2011, however, shoppers would do well to look beyond the two giants for the best deals. Some retailers are beating Walmart's prices on big ticket items. And Amazon is being cagey again this year, so it's impossible to know what will be on sale.

鈥淎mazon is always a wild card,鈥� says Michael Brim, founder of BFAds.net, a website that tracks Black Friday deals.聽鈥淪ince they鈥檙e entirely online, they don鈥檛 have to publish a physical Black Friday ad. We don鈥檛 know their prices until day of, but they鈥檙e always ultra competitive. They don鈥檛 have a traditional price-matching system, but they will always scour competitors鈥� prices and put the same items or a similar item up for a lower price, on a wide variety of items.鈥澛�

Both retailers retain their traditional strengths;聽 鈥淚n Walmart鈥檚 case, it鈥檚 market cap and buying power,鈥� says Mr. Brim.聽 鈥淭hey push more product, so they can cut their prices more often and take more losses than their competitors can.鈥�

鈥淎mazon is just an efficient model. They do one thing, online shopping, and they do it right, without the same constraints as their bricks-and-mortar competitors,鈥� he says.

In many ways, the Amazon/Walmart duel is a microcosm of the larger question of whether online or in-store shopping makes more sense. That battle is growing ever more heated as the online retail sector continues its rapid growth. Online retail sales are expected to eclipse $50 billion for the first time in the fourth quarter of 2011,聽according to projections from Erik Johnson, an economist with IHS Global Insight.

There's every reason to take advantage of both online and traditional retail stores, depending on what you're looking for.

Because it has no limit in terms of inventory, Amazon can boast a bigger selection than Walmart, particularly in the entertainment and electronics categories. 鈥淒efinitely with the books, videos, computer games, and all that stuff, Amazon is the leader,鈥� says Max Levitte, founder and CEO of cheapism.com, an online deal site.

There鈥檚 also the luxury of pre-ordering hot-ticket items, rather than 鈥済oing all the way out to a store and staring at an aisle of empty shelves,鈥� as Mr. Levitte puts it. In most cases, Amazon wins the price game as well, in part because it isn鈥檛 required to collect sales tax in most states. It also has some of the best shipping deals around: many items qualify for free standard shipping, and a $79 per year Amazon Prime subscription gets you unlimited free two-day shipping.

But there's more to shopping than getting the right price. And聽Walmart, ironically, has somewhat of a little guy鈥檚 advantage when it comes to customer service, despite being 10 times bigger than its online competitor. (Walmart鈥檚 revenue was $421.8 billion last year; Amazon鈥檚 was $34.2 billion). 聽

For one, Walmart鈥檚 90-day full refund, no-questions-asked return policy is much better than that of Amazon, which recently got rid of free shipping on returned items. Now, the shipping price comes out of your store credit refund unless the return was a result of a company error.

For another, Walmart's inventory is easier to see.聽Because the inventory is so vast, Amazon鈥檚 indexing of merchandise can be complicated to navigate, according to Mr. Levitte. 鈥淚t鈥檚 too large, and it鈥檚 difficult to tell if it鈥檚 being sold on Amazon or Amazon Marketplace, where the prices are higher.鈥�

Finally, Walmart also offers free assembly on any item that might need it, including furniture, bicycles, grills, and complicated toys

The retail giant certainly has made more 2011 headlines than Amazon thus far, releasing its Black Friday ad earlier than ever and making certain Black-Friday priced items available as early as 10 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day. 鈥淛ust across the board, they have bigger budgets for everything, including ads, 鈥� says Brim. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not really possible for Amazon, or anyone else, to compete pound for pound.鈥�

Despite that extra ad power, Brim points out, Walmart鈥檚 Black Friday deals themselves have been lackluster.

鈥淭his year both Best Buy and Target have edged out Walmart by a pretty decent margin,鈥� he says. 鈥淲hat really drives people鈥檚 attention are the doorbuster ads on a store鈥檚 top five or six items, generally laptops and televisions.鈥� On that front, Best Buy, and occasionally Target, are consistently beating Walmart.

Walmart boasts a holiday price guarantee: If you find a particular item offered at a better price by a local competitor, the store will give you the difference in the form of a gift card. The deal even works retroactively: If you bought a toaster from Walmart last week, and Target offers a cheaper price on the same toaster in December, you can bring the competitors鈥� ad to Walmart any day up until Christmas and claim a refund for the difference.

But the exceptions are huge. The price-matching guarantee doesn鈥檛 apply to Black Friday pricing, or to any prices offered by online vendors, like Amazon, Brim says. 聽鈥淎s is, the Christmas price guarantee isn鈥檛 such a great package.鈥�