Black Friday and Cyber Monday are around the corner, but with consumers having to contend with both inflation and higher interest rates, shoppers are looking for deals.

JCPenney CEO Marc Rosen joins Yahoo Finance’s Brooke DiPalma to discuss what the retailer is seeing so far this holiday shopping season. Rosen says shoppers are being selective but still planning holiday celebrations and buying when they see value, noting “consumers are looking to have a holiday”.

Rosen points out that traffic and engagement has been strong during Black Friday sales events so far, although shoppers appear to be “more skeptical.”

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Video Transcript

SEANA SMITH: Black Friday and Cyber Monday are just around the corner, just a few days away. Deloitte is predicting that Black Friday and Cyber Monday spending will average about $567 this year. That's an increase of 13% from a year ago. Now JCPenney is out with a make it count report showing that consumers are thinking twice here before spending, carefully creating a budget ahead of the holiday season.

We want to bring in Marc Rosen. He's the CEO of JCPenney alongside Yahoo Finance's Brooke DiPalma. Marc, it's great to see you, and thanks so much for taking the time. I know it's certainly a very busy time of year for you. I'm curious what you're seeing in terms of consumer trend-- consumer spending trends. Are you seeing consumers pull back yet?

MARC ROSEN: So I think what we're seeing, as we've gone into the holidays-- we launched our Black Friday early in the month of November. We launched November 3rd through 5th and we had a really, really successful Black Friday launch and what that told us is that consumers are looking to have a holiday this year and they're looking to celebrate with their families.

And we saw great traffic increases in our stores and really, really strong engagement. Since then we've continued with our Black Friday and will continue through the weekend and through Cyber Monday, and we're seeing that customers are continuing to come online and in store. We are seeing a little bit more behavior where they're looking and a little bit more skeptical about some of their purchases, but when they find the great values that we have, and we're committed to provide those great values for our customers, they're shopping and they're buying.

BROOKE DIPALMA: Good morning, Marc. Do you think that consumers are waiting until this week to find the best deals or have they already completed their holiday shopping based upon the deals that they've seen so far?

MARC ROSEN: I think there's still actually a lot of holiday shopping to be done, and I think it's actually going to continue probably beyond this weekend and into the month of December. Like I said, we saw some really good interest in our early deals and as we've come back with Black Friday deals, consumers have been shopping. Again, we are seeing them look a little bit before they're buying and being a little bit more conservative on price.

But JCPenney is really-- we are committed to showing our customer value. We have hundreds of items that we have kept at the same price or lower price than last year and we're really committed to taking inflation out of the holidays for our customers. And when they're seeing that value, our customer's shopping and buying.