A glut of Black Friday pricing promotions, more available shopping days and colder weather has assisted U.S. retailers in bringing back some shine to November same-store retail results. This is no surprise, but it helps the market take a deep breath after weak consumer confidence, a credit crunch that's still in progress and the lack of a "must have" holiday gift item were all worrying retailer watchers a few weeks ago right before Thanksgiving.

U.S. retailers have had a tough year this year (some worse than others) on the backs of spending pullbacks from many customer groups and tightening wallets. So far, estimates are concluding that November same-store sales results will rise 2.5% for November, ahead of the YTD rate of 2.2% through October of this year -- the slowest in over four years.

Welcome to the 38th installment of The Wal-Mart Weekly, a column dedicated to bringing you insight, wit, facts, results, opinions and just a bit of everything else when it comes down to a very hot topic these days: Wal-Mart.

Last week, I suggested a plan of action to Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) for the marketing event that should rule all others: Black Friday. While Wal-Mart was busy this year threatening websites and online entities with lawsuits in order to plug leaks, the retailer could have used some innovation in its marketing message and actually driven a whole wave of curious buyers to its front doors.

Wal-Mart needs to be more innovate and far more proactive. Business as usual, especially during the busy holiday shopping season, should be an action of the past.

Today, I'll tear down some sections of Wal-Mart's Black Friday specials and we'll see how competitive it is with the other big retailers in town. I'll specifically look at consumer electronics retailers Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE: BBY) and Circuit City Stores, Inc. (NYSE: CC) (since electronics is the hot category this shopping season), and discount retailer Target as well.

Yesterday, the guesses were lined up about this past Monday's online traffic and sales figures. Well, the traffic figures are official now, and online traffic on Cyber Monday jumped 26% over last year's levels. If consumer spending is slowing down this winter due to energy prices and credit crunches, it sure did not show this past Monday.

Hitwise, an internet traffic reporting firm, released initial figures that showed Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) rise to the top of the most-visited retail website list on Monday. It's interesting to note that Hitwise also stated that this was the third annual Cyber Monday in a row where growth was seen. Amid talk of slower holiday retail sales this year, could it be that customers are moving those purchases from the early morning hours of Black Friday to the comfortable office mouse clicking environment of the following Monday?

Hitwise recorded a 26% increase to the Hitwise 100 Retail Index this year (the top 100 retail websites) compared to November 27, 2006 levels. The largest growth areas this year on Cyber Monday were the electronics and video games categories.

This week's Cyber Monday retail event on the internet is shaping up to be the best ever, according to many retail industry watchers. Retailers Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) and Circuit City Stores Inc. (NYSE: CC) had heavy promotions this past Monday, along with online-only retailers Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Buy.com.

Did possible record sales come after heavy price chopping, or was the Cyber Monday sales push more customer-driven? Heavy discounting already is being looked at as the cause, and although legit, it could cause a large dip in profits to those retailers overexercising the strategy.

Now that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are over, retailers nationwide will continue the price discounting this week (and beyond) to keep those sales pouring in all the way until the end of December. Some retailers are taking the discount versus profit line this week, as 50% off is being seen at many online outlets, which is sure to cause a profit knock at the end of the day.

Is this any surprise? Not really -- loss leaders are always used to hook consumers looking for bargains into stores (and online retailer websites) where they are either ferociously upsold more expensive products or are extensively cross-sold more products than they came looking for.

It's the savvy consumer who seeks out a good bargain and leaves with just that item (or items) that retailers don't really want. But the U.S. consumer is a savvy one indeed, and the more tactics retailers use to push non-bargain products, the more consumers shrug them off.

It's been said that there are no "must have" gift products this year. These products, based on the law of supply and demand, command premium prices. When there is a lack of that kind of product, the only recourse many retailers have is to slash prices to get customers lifting up their spending. Although the holiday shopping season this year may indeed be a large one, will any companies make significant profit? Is there a goal of selling as much as possible while making very little profit in the process?

According to retail tracking experts ShopperTrak RCT Corp., this year's holiday shopping season, which officially began this past Friday, was off to a "very strong" start. To those economists and retail pundits that were buckled in for a bumpy ride to kick off the holiday shopping season, this is probably a big sign of relief. Yes, you can put those Pepto Bismol bottles down now, folks.

Although one report doesn't make a whole season better, the report from ShopperTrak estimated Black Friday sales this year up 8.3% over last year, with sales this past Friday alone totaling $10.3 billion from retail outlets across the U.S. ShopperTrak thought, as do I, that even in the face of rising energy prices and credit tightness due to risky loan defaults and mortgage resets, it takes a lot more than that for consumers to curb holiday spending.

The long haul now takes over, as estimates and details will pour in week by week through the Christmas holiday until it's very clear that the success from last week's Black Friday holiday spending kickoff will last all the way through December. Although today is Cyber Monday (when everyone begins shopping online at work), even online retailers saw excellent activity this past Friday. Visitors directed from www.shopping.com to its merchants increased 61% from 2006 levels, and eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) even said that customers are picking up their computer mice more than their car keys. That makes for a nice quote more than it gives us meaningful data. We'll see if it stacks up after results come in from today's online shopping activity.

Cyber Monday -- today's marketing gimmick to get people to buy holiday gifts online in the wake of last week's Black Friday -- is expected to generate $4.8 billion worth of e-commerce. According to the New York Times, Doug Hart, a BDO Seidman analyst expects today's Cyber Monday sales to account for 12% of the $39 billion in online revenue this holiday season -- almost as much as the 15% share of holiday sales recorded by bricks and mortar retailers this Black Friday.

Cyber Monday often features online discounts. For example, in 2006 Ice.com, an online jeweler, offered a 20% discount on 15 items on Cyber Monday. RalphLauren.com, a unit of Polo Ralph Lauren Corp. (NYSE: RL) recently had a pre-Thanksgiving 40% off sale which ended November 19th. I received a $200 gift card for my birthday and when I tried to use it after learning from the gift giver of the sale that morning, RalphLauren.com could not verify its value. When I called its customer service line, RalphLauren.com told me that the gift card was worthless.

I notified the gift giver who called RalphLauren.com whose customer service person, Marlon, called me and told me he would take care of the problem that day and get back to me so I could use the card to take advantage of the 40% off sale. Marlon did not call me back, so late that afternoon I called in to customer service -- mentioning Marlon's name (she did not know who Marlon was) -- and was told that I should ask the gift giver to return to wherever he got the card and try again.

The New York Times reports on a study in The Journal of Commercial Research which concludes that consumers will spend more if they think about how much money they have right before shopping. Specifically, supermarket shoppers surveyed who thought about their wealth before buying spent 36% more than those who did not.

This study suggests that people spend based on how much they think they have -- what I would call their "cognitive wealth reserves." In one experiment, 55 shoppers at a supermarket in Cambridge, MA were asked a series of nosy questions about their wallets: Did they have any library cards? Did they carry pictures or cash? How many other wallets did they own?

An equal number were asked similar questions about their financial portfolios instead.

Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT) shares have been soaring today. Traders seem to be excited as the start of the holiday shopping season sees many shoppers packing stores to buy discounted TVs, toys and electronics. The entire retail industry is higher today, with TGT one of the biggest winners. If you think that the company won't fall by too much in the coming months, then now could be a good time to look at a bullish hedged trade on TGT.

The stock hit its 52-week high of $70.75 in July and set its 52-week low of $50.25 in November. TGT opened this morning at $53.98. So far today the stock risen since the open and notched an intra-day high of $57.00. As of 12:15, TGT is trading at $56.99, up $2.89 (5.3%). The chart for TGT looks bearish and steady while S&P gives the stock a neutral 3 STARS (out of 5) hold rating.

Most of us are recovering from a hefty array of Thanksgiving dinner portions this morning, and some brazen and brave souls are probably standing in the cold (and have been for hours) waiting for the doors to open early today. Retailers across the country will be opening at 5am or 6am this morning to recruit as many bargain shoppers as possible.

This way, each one can make the inventory dials spin like mad and move as much product off the shelf as any one day can allow. As usual, the bulk of the sales items at some of the largest retailers in the U.S. are centered around home electronics and electronic gadgets. There's some toys on sale too, of course!

With all that said, if you're one of the patient folks who didn't get up in darkness to slog down to a customer line at your favorite retailer, I'll do some of the entertaining work for you today. Like this writer, many of you reading this probably traveled from home for Thanksgiving. I'm updating you from the warm confines of a mountain lodge in Missouri. With a hot cup of coffee, a laptop and high-speed internet connection, I've collected some bargains for you. As such, you may want to call your spouse if he or she is in line at some retailer and snatch up some of the below.

First of all, visit the below websites if you really want a primer on all the Black Friday sales this morning:

• www.bfads.net
• www.gottadeal.com
• www.fatwallet.com

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) said this week that it would heavily publicize its website for this Friday's Black Friday sales event and would kick off the 'official' start to holiday sales on Thanksgiving Day. It will launch several web-only sales tomorrow and will accept orders as well on turkey day. Then, come Friday morning, stores will unleash into pandemonium most likely, along with other retailers nationwide.

Some of the deals that will be visible on www.walmart.com tomorrow have already been officially announced by the retailer. Examples: the Microsoft Zune 30 gigabyte MP3 video player for $98.87, and the Garmin Nuvi 650 Portable global positioning system for $298.87. In the case of the Zune, it's last year's model that is already selling for under $100 at many web retailers, so that's not a surprise.

In addition to "visible" sales that will launch on the Wal-Mart website tomorrow, the retailer will have a special "secret" deals area on its website to allude to deals that will be available in stores first thing Friday morning. That is, Black Friday morning.

Those "secret" deals won't be advertised in its circulars, which are the most common ways customers find Black Friday sales information. I said last week that Wal-Mart needs to become a little more creative in its Black Friday marketing efforts. This isn't a huge start, but it's a start.

Once again, one of the hotter items during the holiday season will be computer products. Specifically, laptop computers will probably make the mark as one of the most popular gift items this season, right along with HDTVs and gaming consoles. Consumers continue to replace clunky desktop computer systems with portable and light laptops, and retailers are more than happy to oblige with loss-leader priced laptops to lure shoppers into stores.

Big box giants Best Buy, Inc. (NYSE: BBY), Circuit City Stores, Inc. (NYSE: CC) and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) are expected to join the fray, and these retailers will most likely spill the beans today and tomorrow (Thanksgiving Day) to whet the appetites of computer bargain hunters come this Friday morning -- also known, of course, as Black Friday.

Best Buy, Inc. (NYSE: BBY) will be rocking and rolling this coming Friday, as millions of bargain-seeking shoppers hit the early morning streets of American to seize on those Black Friday prices everywhere.

It's almost like a TV sitcom, mind-numbingly predictable: retailers open up early, shoppers get up early, TV news crews film them, everyone shops 'til they drop then go home for turkey sandwiches while retailers count up the numbers and hope for the best. Every year the same plot.

Well, the largest consumer electronics retailer in the U.S. has already rehearsed for this coming Friday, as it engaged recently in tests to ensure the surge of traffic this Friday doesn't clog store openings, checkout lines or shopping aisles. Best Buy, in other words, is preparing some preventive maintenance in anticipation for the chaotic rush at the end of this week.

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) plans on cleaning up the third-party "Amazon Marketplace" due to many product duplications that are most likely getting on the nerves of many regular Amazon shoppers (the writer included). This new "clean sweep" inventory strategy only deals with the bookselling section of Amazon's online offerings, but it comes years too late.

ASINs, which are Amazon's unique numbers that are assigned to each individual product name or title (like a UPC code), are duplicated all over the e-tailer's website where it lets booksellers sell used and new books directly to Amazon customers for a small commission. The problem is that the largely unregulated Amazon Marketplace is littered with confusion due to so many ASIN duplications and such that the bargain shopper can become a tad frustrated when shopping for that immensely popular $3.95 used book.

But then again, Amazon's third-party sellers are (correctly) stating that the timing of the inventory cleanup is not really good, with the holiday shopping season in full swing and all. Could such drastic changes on this area of Amazon's website cause unknown glitches at a time when sales are everything?

With Black Friday coming up a week from tomorrow, many sellers probably don't want any changes at all to the way Amazon Marketplace operates -- something that makes perfect commerce sense. But past this holiday season, the inventory management of third-party goods needs to be a priority for the e-tailer. The way it presents many book items from outside sellers is anything from world class right at this moment.

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) is cracking down this holiday season when it comes to the famous "Black Friday" sales that happens the day after Thanksgiving. Black Friday is widely considered to be the busiest shopping day of the entire year and it's when many retailers go into the black for the year -- in other words, they become profitable on that day.

In recent years, newspaper ads from Wal-Mart and other large retailers have found there way onto the internet weeks before the ads are supposed to be available, enabling people to find out about these Black Friday sales quite a bit before the retailers want to announce them. Last year alone, I found scanned newspaper ads all over the place on the web, with large collections found at consumer forums like FatWallet.com, bfads.net and GottaDeal.com.

This year may be a bit different as Wal-Mart's legal team takes a more proactive approach. Their message to websites and forums which are considering displaying Wal-Mart's Black Friday ads before Thanksgiving: don't do it. The retailer's legal team is rounding up the usual suspects early this year, telling them that displaying the retailer's ads before their official November 19 release date violates copyright laws (among other things). Will threats curb the amount of Black Friday newspaper ads we'll all see come Thanksgiving? I suspect that it may cut down on their availability, but I doubt it will eradicate them entirely from the internet.