NEW YORK — With round-the-clock hours, advertising blitzes, extra catalogs, discounts and more discounts, merchants are trying to draw last-minute shoppers and give a final boost to sales in a trying holiday season.

        Starting Thursday at 6 a.m., Kmart Corp. stores began keeping their doors open for 110 straight hours, compared with last year's 66-hour marathon.

        Blockbuster Inc. has increased its TV advertising by 20 percent for the final days before Christmas, while Chicago-based General Growth Properties, which operates 140 malls around the country, stepped up newspaper advertising.

        Bloomingdale's, hoping to snag procrastinators, sent an extra cat alog, highlighting discounted sweaters and perfumes, to more than 1 million homes in the season's final stretch.

        This season had five full weekends and was 32 days long, one day more than last year. But many shoppers seem to be staying out of the stores because of unseasonably warm weather, the recession or the shock waves from the Sept. 11 terrorism attacks.

        Retail analysts expect the weakest season in more than a decade, and don't share merchants' hopes that a final buying spree can change that.

        The share of holiday sales generated in the last six days before Christmas has been increasing in the last decade. But C. Britt Beemer, chairman of America's Research Group of Charleston, S.C., believes that won't happen this year.

        He expects the share will drop to about 25 percent, from last year's 30.9 percent, which was a record and a big jump from 23.9 percent in 1999, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers.

        “I think the season peaked,” said Mr. Beemer. “Right now, consumers are not interested in buying gifts, but (in) being with their families.”

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