Since I'm in charge of Black Friday plans I have a bit of knowledge on the subject from a ETL standpoint.
1) Yes, that was a idea that was tossed around in a all STL meeting about a month ago. Target (as most of us know) competes with Walmart and generally opens a hour after them. This reduces the blow back from the "family" people who make a huge stink about how we are ruining the holiday. (Personally I don't give a shit, but I hate my family). The idea was that Walmart may be doing a all day event, in the theory that if they do it, the people who want to shop can shop before T-Day dinner. There is multiple issues with the 8AM all day and night idea though.
- Staffing
-- No store has enough staff to do a 38 to 40 hour stint. Well some might, but we are looking at multiple overtimes, multiple split shifts, multiple melt-downs.
- Crowd Control
-- You can open at 8AM thats fine, prepare for utter chaos later though. By opening at 8AM you MAY have a line, but probably wont be as big as say a 9PM line. This causes a issue, because past the first few hours of black friday, people don't want to line up. The shit is torn down. What happens at 9PM when the lines are tore down and everyone is just going crazy in your store? FAMILIES HAVE MADE BLACK FRIDAY A TRADITION I know that my sisters LOVE going out after diner and go shopping and have for years. Other families do it too. "Screw Football" say the women, we are going shopping....they wont say this at 8AM though when they are preparing the Turkey. (sorry I'm looking at statistics, not trying to be sexist)
- Time release product
-- AINT NOBODY coming at midnight to get some TV's that were gone by 8:10AM. Ya dig? You would have to have time release product, which seems really annoying. Your losing out on sales by getting rid of everything by 9:00AM
2) I believe the idea was scrapped except for certain regions which may have been doing a "all day" thing. Most stores were thinking (and this was the big rumor) 5PM for opening. I actually made my TENT plans around 5PM. I can assure you that this really pissed people off, but there is a legit chance of 5 or 6pm.
