*

Retailers offer exclusive products and steep discounts

*

Shorter holiday season pressures retailers to maximize

sales

*

Shoppers making 'price checks' online before purchases

*

Inflation affects spending habits, increasing demand for

deals

(Updates paragraph 10 with online spending estimates)

By Siddharth Cavale, Arriana McLymore and P.J. Huffstutter

FORT WAYNE, Indiana/NORTH BERGEN, New Jersey/RALEIGH,

North Carolina/SANTA BARBARA, California, Nov 29 (Reuters) -

Brushing snowflakes off her hair, Teagan Hickson walked into

a Walmart Supercenter in Fort Wayne, Indiana, with hopes

of picking up a few holiday deals on Black Friday. The first

thing the mother of two spotted: A pallet stacked high with

Gourmia digital air fryer ovens for $50 each.

Her sister Jordan had been wanting one, she said, but

money was tight right now for everyone in her family. She

worried about expenses next year, after reading posts on

Facebook about price hikes if President-elect Donald Trump's

planned tariffs

go into effect in January.

"I'm trying to not spend too much," said Hickson, 43. "I

don't want to add to my credit cards, but I don't want to pay

more for stuff next year."

As retailers reopened U.S. stores after the American

Thanksgiving holiday, some locations drew clusters of shoppers.

People were eager to see stores'

Black Friday discounts

, often comparing them to rivals' prices for similar

merchandise online.

Weighing on the minds of many Americans: Should prices

rise in 2025 as a result of Trump's move to implement

new tariffs on some U.S. imports

, consumers like Hickson

could feel impact

at grocery stores and restaurants, potentially driving up

their living costs.

At the Walmart ( WMT ), Hickson called her husband Josh, who was

sitting in front of his computer at home and ready to compare

prices in the store with what they could find online.

"Baby, this looks pretty nice," she told Josh. "What's

it online?" A few seconds later, Josh found a similar model on

Amazon ( AMZN ) for double the price. She grabbed a box, put it

in her cart, and headed deeper into the big-box store.

Walmart ( WMT ), which operates

4,700 U.S. stores

, offered deals on Samsung TVs, Dyson vacuum cleaners, Lego

and Hot Wheels toys, Levi's jeans, and air fryers.

"I find the prices pretty much same as last year," said

Cristal Lopez as she pushed a cart full of clothing and a couple

of sling tote bags through the aisles of a North Bergen, New

Jersey, Walmart Supercenter. She intends to spend $1,000 to

$2,000 total - same as last year - on holiday purchases, mostly

on clothing.

Americans bought more merchandise using their mobile

phones and laptops, spending $7.9 billion online through 6:30

p.m. ET (1130 GMT), up 8.2% compared to a year ago, according to

Adobe Analytics, which keeps track of devices that use Adobe's

software to help power more than 1 trillion visits  to  U.S.

retail sites.

Shoppers looking to upgrade their TVs found discounts

peaking at 24% off listed price, according to Adobe's analysis

of retailers' online prices. On average, retailers offered 25%

discounts to shoppers globally, compared to 26% a year ago, on

websites and apps as late-afternoon Eastern time, according to

Salesforce, a cloud-based software company that analyses

e-commerce traffic patterns.

'SPONTANEOUS PURCHASES'

Still, the U.S. retail trade group the National Retail

Federation expects roughly 85.6 million shoppers have visited

stores this year, up from 76 million last year. Shoppers have

only 26 days between Thanksgiving and Christmas, against a more

leisurely 31 days last year.

Adding pressure for retailers is inflation-fatigued

shoppers' reluctance to splurge unless they get good deals.

"With fewer days to shop, consumers are more likely to

make spontaneous purchases, contributing to retail growth during

the holiday season," said Marshal Cohen, chief retail adviser at

Circana, a research firm.

Evelyn Contre, 49, waited in a 20-person line at a Lululemon

store with her two daughters. Contre had already

browsed the websites of Abercrombie and Lululemon on

Thursday for Black Friday deals before heading into Crabtree

Valley Mall in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Friday.

Early crowds were sparse at a Macy's store in

Santa Barbara, California despite its discounts reaching 50% for

home goods and clothing. Retiree John Dillard, 66, was shopping

for Levi's 504 jeans, which Macy's offered at 40% off their

usual $60 price. Bargains were important to him, he said.

Target ( TGT ) is selling a new Taylor Swift Eras Tour

book, and exclusive "Wicked"-related products, including

"Wicked" soundtrack CDs for $39.99, with an offer of buy two,

get one free for Target Circle members.

The retailer also cut prices by $100 on products such as

a 75-inch Westinghouse TV and Nintendo Switch gaming console,

and took more than 50% off Barbie dolls, Keurig coffee machines

and KitchenAid mixers, deals which started on Thanksgiving and

run through Saturday.

"Black Friday is just not what it used to be," said Hoss

Moss, a 58-year-old chef from New Jersey, who stood outside a

Target ( TGT ) store for the first time in 15 years to buy

Swift's book

for his teenage daughter.

"Grocery prices are expensive and ... even clothing is

not at a price you would get before." He said his family of four

plans to spend $2,000 to $3,000 on gifts this year, mostly at

Macy's and Lululemon.