Shoppers have been bombarded all month with coupons, 50 percent off deals and doorbuster specials.

And it remains a good bet that many people will line up before dawn Friday on the holiday season’s traditional “Black Friday” selling blitz to snare a DVD player or flat-screen TV at a rock-bottom price.

“This is an effort to start momentum early,” New York retail analyst Walter Loeb said of the early-bird pricing that has become a Black Friday tradition. “They lose money on it, because the selling price is almost at cost.”

Retailers are hoping bargain hunters won’t just grab the deals and head back to bed Friday. Strong sales early in the holiday shopping season make it less likely they will be forced to slash prices in December. Retailers dubbed the day “Black Friday” because strong sales put many stores “in the black” profitwise.

Although surveys show about 30 percent of consumers expect to shop the day after Thanksgiving, that number is down from past years, apparently because of skittishness about sales.

Those saying they plan to shop Friday is the lowest in a decade, said Britt Beemer, head of America’s Research Group.

Beemer’s survey found that even fewer, about 26 percent, plan to shop Saturday and Sunday. In the past decade, the Friday number has been as high as 45 percent, he said.

Beemer attributes the decline to a feeling on the part of shoppers that, aside from “doorbuster specials,” markdowns won’t be attractive enough on the weekend.

“Last year, consumers didn’t see 50 percent off, and they said, ‘I’m not going to fight the crowds,'” Beemer said.

Weaver's Department Store employee Katie Parker makes some final changes to the shoe department in preparation for Black Friday. Retail stores, including Weaver's, 901 Mass, prepared Wednesday for the biggest shopping day of the year.

It’s the perennial shopper’s dilemma: whether to buy early or wait out the season in hopes of getting a better price later, when retailers get nervous and slash prices.

This year, retailers started holiday promotions early, to coax shoppers to buy before Thanksgiving. At the same time, they’ve tightened inventories to avoid getting stuck with a lot of unsold sweaters and mittens after Christmas.

“It looks like the tactics used the day after Thanksgiving can be used at other times,” said Richard Hastings, retail sector analyst for Bernard Sands in New York.

Many stores got a jump on Black Friday this year.

“This year, the industry has made it easier to find sales in November,” Hastings said. It’s possible that the strong sales reported by retailers in October had something to do with early holiday shopping, he said.

By this weekend, 76 percent of consumers say they will have started their holiday shopping, including 43 percent who started by October, according to a survey from the National Retail Federation.

A customer walks past a display of sweaters with detachable faux fur collars and bows at a Sears store in downtown Chicago. With the holiday shopping season beginning, retailers are hoping that the merchandising of various gifts will interest frugal shoppers into spending early in the season.

Electronics is high on most lists of hot gift categories this year. In the third quarter of the year, electronics retailers were the biggest gainers in earnings growth, up 55 percent, according to RetailMetrics in Boston.

Best Buy is expected to make an especially strong showing, said William Cody, director of the Baker Retailing Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.

“They do the best advertising. They really focus on getting people inside the store,” he said.

Mass marketers and department stores also are targeting electronics customers. Wal-Mart has become a major player in electronics, using TVs and DVD players as doorbuster specials in recent years.

Despite the early November sales, people waiting until Friday to start shopping shouldn’t feel they’ve missed out on the bargains.

“I think retailers are going to be as aggressive as ever,” said Walter Loeb, a New York retail analyst who publishes the Loeb Retail Letter.