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If you make holiday shopping convenient, Americans will come in droves. It's estimated that U.S. shoppers hit stores and websites at record numbers over the Thanksgiving weekend, according to a survey released by the National Retail Federation on Sunday. They were attracted by retailers' efforts to make shopping easier, including opening stores on Thanksgiving evening, updating mobile shopping applications for smartphones and tablets, and expanding shipping and layaway options.

The Black Friday shopping weekend apparently took a tragic turn early Sunday morning when an alleged shoplifter died while being apprehended by employees outside a Lithonia Walmart.

Black Friday retail sales online this year topped $1 billion for the first time ever as more consumers used the Internet do their early holiday shopping, comScore Inc said on Sunday.

Black Friday is a distant memory. Small Business Saturday is long gone. Now, it's Cyber Monday's turn. Cyber Monday, coined in 2005 by a shopping trade group that noticed a spike in online sales on the Monday after Thanksgiving when people returned to their work computers, is the next in a line of days that stores are counting on to jumpstart the holiday shopping season.

As you may have seen if you've visited Apple's (AAPL) online store today, the company is offering some modest discounts for Black Friday here and there, nothing huge. Macrumors's Arnold Kim has the lowdown on which things are cheaper.

Put down that turkey leg. It's time to shop. No, really. Stores typically open in the wee hours of the morning on the day after Thanksgiving known as Black Friday, named for the period when stores traditionally turn a profit for the year.

This holiday season, Burger King won't be the only place where you can have it your way. It used to be enough for stores to promise discounts of up to 70 percent off to lure shoppers during the busy holiday shopping season. But the ease of ordering online and the sluggish economy has created more demanding U.S. consumers who aren't impressed by discounts alone. They want their shopping just like their fast food: not only cheap, but convenient too.

An estimated 147 million Americans plan to go shopping sometime this weekend, according the National Retail Federation. But who are these people, what's the psychology driving them to rise before dawn in pursuit of a deal -- and have they really never heard of online shopping?

From Los Angeles to Tampa, shoppers are already camping out in front of big-box retailers, determined to be among the first in line for door-buster deals. In Los Angeles, some hardcore consumers have been in line since last Monday, even taking vacation from work in order to save big money. An estimated 147 million Americans will take advantage of Black Friday sales, 4 percent more than last year.

J.C. Penney CEO Ron Johnson seems unfazed that the department store chain's mounting losses and sales declines have led to growing criticism of his plan to change the way we shop. Perhaps that's because this isn't the first time during Johnson's 30-year career that he's attempted what seemed impossible.