Hordes of shoppers rushed to the supermarkets as Black Friday kicked off in the US following Thanksgiving Day. The major retailers were fully prepared for the event on 27 November, offering deep discounts across the board.

"Today actually, we have a lot of great items pretty much across all different departments. I think just like talking to the customers that home theatres and televisions are the things that customers are really looking for. So we honestly expecting customers to really gravitate to pretty much every department, because we are greatly deals throughout the store for our customers," said Maurice, the manager of Best Buy.

Most of the shoppers said they were driven to the stores by particular deals. "I think some of the things are really nice, at least the deals on the TVs, the deals on the TVs are really good. They are less than half and I think that's brilliant. So most of the stuff is really nice," said customer Anam.

Since early morning, customers queued outside the shops before their opening times. One customer said he started to joined a queue in front of a shop at 3.30am. Black Friday's sales volume is also an indication of the country's retail industry. NRF (National Retail Federation) spokeswoman Kathy Grannis Allen said she was optimistic about healthy gains for retailers.

She said: "Overall, the average person is expected to spend about $805 on holiday gifts and non-gifts. And that's very similar to last year, so at the end of the day we are actually very optimistic about the chances for healthy holiday gains for retailers."

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