The Black Friday sales have begun, but early signs are that UK stores have seen smaller crowds than last year.
UK stores opened their doors early and cut-price deals were put online overnight, with analysts predicting record sales.
Consultants Experian and online retail group IMRG are forecasting online purchases will hit £1.07bn, the first time they have passed £1bn in one day.
Visa Europe says £1.9bn could be spent online and in-store on its cards alone.
Last year's Black Friday saw shoppers fighting over bargains, websites crashing and delivery companies struggling to cope.
Police warning
A spokesman for Tesco said it had been very busy so far with early shoppers behaving well.
The BBC's Ben Thompson, reporting from a Currys store in Brentford, described a similar scene.
The police had warned shops to ensure they had carefully thought out security plans so they could avoid a repeat of last year's trouble.
Mark Elliot, Director of MBNA, said a few years ago retailers in America had similar problems to those seen here in 2014, but now it was a "sleek" operation.
The discount day originated in the US, where it takes place the day after Thanksgiving and kick-starts the Christmas shopping period.
'Unsustainable'
Last year, Amazon sold more than 5.5 million items on Black Friday at a rate of 64 items per second.
Ebay is expecting nine million British consumers to log on during the 24-hour period and for 25 items to be sold every second.
Some of the stores who have opened their doors early include Argos shops and a selection of Tesco, Sainsbury's and Currys PC World stores.
Gary Booker of Carphone Dixons said the retailer had brought in 40% more stock to cope with the predicted number of shoppers, but he admitted the cheapest prices that consumers will find in the year will still be on Boxing Day.
Earlier this year, retailer John Lewis warned that UK firms would have to rethink the heavy discounting of Black Friday, but it has decided that it has little option but to compete with other retailers and will be offering in-store and online promotions.
However, supermarket chain Asda, which started Black Friday promotions in the UK in 2013, and Primark have decided not to take part this year.
David Blair, of global brand consultancy Fitch, said the fact Asda had pulled out of Black Friday in the UK suggested its US parent company, WalMart, did not think Black Friday had a future in the UK.
A report by LCP Consulting suggests almost a third of retailers in the UK and US think Black Friday is "unprofitable and unsustainable".
John Hannett, leader of the Usdaw shopworkers' trade union, said last year's Black Friday sales resulted in a two-thirds increase in incidents of verbal abuse, threats and violence against retail staff.
'Spiky' period
Some analysts feel the event has distorted Christmas spending pulling it forward at a time when retailers traditionally charged full prices.
James Miller, senior retail consultant at Experian Marketing Services, said: "There is little doubt Black Friday has dramatically changed the way people shop in the run-up to Christmas and has created an expectation of deep discounts that arguably did not exist before.
"Offline retailers in particular need to plan very carefully for this new 'spiky' festive period. While Black Friday offers the potential for a short blast of extra sales volume, this will be at the expense of margins during the most crucial period of the trading year."
Consumers association Which? also warned shoppers to be careful.
Which? editor Richard Headland said: "There will be a whole host of deals available on Black Friday but not all of them will be genuine."
Paul Green, business development manager at retail systems integrator, Tryzens said Black Friday should be got rid of altogether.
"Black Friday makes little sense in the UK. Without Thanksgiving, the event's focus point, the decision to concentrate so many resources and discounts on a Friday in November seems arbitrary at best and significantly disruptive at worst."
Article Source: BBC News