As many as 138 million shoppers are expected to hit stores on Black Friday weekend, four million more than last year and the most since the National Retail Federation survey began compiling the data in 2006, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

By logic, Black Friday should be fading in importance. The crowds can be avoided by shopping online, where promotions abound. Many stores have shifted "Door Buster" sales to earlier in the month. Some retailers even opened on Thanksgiving Day itself. Yet Black Friday is bigger than ever.

Black Friday is expected to be the number one retail sales day of the year for the sixth year in a row, according to ShopperTrak, which installs monitoring devices in stores to gage traffic. 

Because Christmas falls on a Saturday, retailers -- and procrastinators -- will be cheated out of a "Super Saturday" last-minute shopping day, the day that often vies with Black Friday as the biggest day of the season.

Several large retailers, including Kohl's, Toys 'R Us, Macy's and Target are opening their doors earlier than they did last year to prepare for the holiday-shopping onslaught.

Black Friday will send what is expected to be a stronger but fiercely competitive holiday season into high gear. The National Retail Federation is projecting 2.3 percent sales growth for the period -- defined as November and December combined -- the strongest increase since 2006, when sales increased by 3.1 percent.

But the breadth of online deals will keep at least some customers away from stores. Forrester Research predicts online sales will reach $52 billion, a 16 percent increase over last year.

Early results showed American consumers had begun shopping online earlier than last year. As of 7:00pm ET on Thanksgiving, online sales in the US had increased 15 percent over the same time period last year, according to International Business Machines Corp.'s Coremetrics, which gathers data directly from the websites of more than 500 U.S. retailers, including Bloomingdale's, L'Occitane en Provence, Macy's, and Petco.

Still, for American retailers, online sales account for only about eight percent of overall retail sales.

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