Hawaii shoppers are getting ready to empty their pocketbooks.

As retailers roll out holiday sales, it should be a “very high consumer spending holiday season,” said Nathaniel Hartmann, associate professor of marketing at the University of Hawaii Shidler College of Business.

“Unemployment is lower, many consumers are better off financially than they were before. The state of the economy has improved, and consumers have a greater net worth than they did a year ago,” he said.

Despite the appeal of Black Friday — the day after Thanksgiving and traditionally the biggest shopping day of the year — consumers in recent years have been more inclined to spread their holiday shopping throughout the season.

Ewa Beach resident Holly Mactagone got a jump-start on checking off her holiday list, scooping up deals from Target.

“There’s deals coming out before Black Friday. Every day they’ll offer something,” she said. “I get like a million emails every day from all these stores. I feel like it’s better to spread out — not just Black Friday and that’s it — so it’s not as crazy.”

The abundance of deals over the last few months of the year is good for consumers who are able to comparison-shop and prevent overspending, Hartmann said.

“Today it’s easier than ever to use mobile devices and apps to comparison-shop and ensure you’re buying an item at the cheapest price possible,” he said. “Consumers should remember value equals benefits minus cost. A lower cost … may not always be a good purchase for customers if there’s little benefit to purchasing.”

Retailers are anticipating one of the busiest sales weekends of the year, with an estimated 164 million consumers expected to flood the malls and internet from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, the day after the Black Friday weekend, according to a survey by the National Retail Federation.

Tanna Dang, owner of Eden in Love, a women’s clothing boutique with shops at the International Market Place, and in Kakaako and Las Vegas, anticipates a 15 percent jump in Black Friday sales over the previous year. The company opened a separate Black Friday pop-up this year at the International Market Place with about 40 people set to help at the store, up from 30 last year when roughly 1,000 customers waited in long lines for discounts of up to 50 percent.

“This holiday season we’ve definitely bulked up more of our inventory, expecting to have better sales. The pop-up location we have here at International Market Place is bigger. You can see every single hook, every single wall, every single inch is taken because we really want to be able to max out sales this year,” Dang said. “I think consumer spending is definitely going to be up because the economy has this uptick. It feels like people are out. They’re ready for the holiday, whereas last year people were almost dreading the holiday.”

The National Retail Federation is projecting holiday sales in November and December to reach as much as $720.9 billion, compared with $691.9 billion in 2017. The group’s most recent retail survey projects consumers will spend an average of $1,000 this holiday season, about $40 more than they spent last year.

Hawaii is no exception.

The state ranks in the top half of the country for holiday revenue, according to San Francisco software company Womply, which analyzed 2017 transactions at 54,000 retailers nationwide to predict this year’s trends. November and December account for 19.1 percent of annual revenue for Hawaii retailers, with Black Friday being the best revenue day of the year. Local retailers saw a 179 percent increase in Black Friday sales over the average day last year, the company said.

“Hawaiian retailers experience a longer holiday sales bump than is seen in any other state,” said Womply spokesman Dan Lalli. “It’s likely this is due to the regular influx of tourists during the holiday season who support the local economy from November through the end of the year.”

WAYS TO PREVENT OVERSPENDING:

>> Have a clear budget and stick to it (retailers like to cross-sell items or up-sell so consumers buy more).

>> Comparison-shop online and in stores.

>> Stay away from shopping carts and baskets (over time, stores have increased the sizes so shoppers put more items in them without realizing they’re buying more).

>> Be skeptical of ads that put a maximum number of units that can be purchased (research shows those promotions can increase the number of items consumers end up buying).

>> Use headphones when shopping (slow music has been shown to result in shoppers spending more time and money in stores).

Source: Nathaniel Hartmann, UH Shidler College of Business