Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's biggest retailer, will open stores an hour earlier this year on Black Friday and match any competitor's price to win holiday sales after a lackluster season last year.

Wal-Mart on Friday will also offer a 42-inch plasma television for $997, selected DVDs for $3.44, and a Hewlett-Packard Co. desktop computer with a 15-inch LCD flat panel monitor for $398 from 5 a.m to 11 a.m. Last year, its stores opened at 6 a.m. The company will match any price on an identical item featured in a competitor's print ad, according to a statement yesterday.

"There's no ambiguity to the message that they have been putting out," said Patricia Edwards, a Seattle-based portfolio manager at Wentworth, Hauser & Violich, with $6.4 billion in assets including Wal-Mart shares.

The Friday after Thanksgiving, traditionally called "Black Friday" because that's when many retailers become profitable for the year, is one of the busiest shopping days of the season. It was the biggest day in 2003 by sales and the second-busiest last year and in 2002 behind the Saturday before Christmas, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers.

Wal-Mart last year was slow to discount early in the holiday season, forcing it to take the unusual step in December of running full-page newspaper ads highlighting price cuts on about two dozen holiday items. This year, the Bentonville, Ark.-based company started what it called its earliest and most aggressive holiday campaign ever on Nov 1.

Wal-Mart's Sam's Club will also open at 5 a.m. for the first time and offer free breakfast to shoppers, Chief Financial Officer Tom Schoewe said last week.

Wal-Mart is expanding the upscale merchandise it carries online and in its discount and Sam's Club stores, adding items like $100 cashmere men's trench coats to compete with No. 2 discount chain Target, whose sales have outpaced it all year.

The strategy may be working. Target today cut its November forecast same-store sales gain by half, to 2 percent to 3 percent.

"Wal-Mart is fighting back, and they are absolutely aware that their biggest competition is Target," Edwards said.

Target's average monthly same-store sales gain through October was 6.3 percent, compared with 3.6 percent for Wal-Mart.

More than 38 percent of shoppers said discounts are the most important factor in deciding on a purchase, according to a National Retail Federation survey.