Price Cuts Pulling in Shoppers : Retailing: Markdowns up to 50% are helping department stores. But Christmas sales at discounters, specialty shops and big general merchandisers are off to a slow start.

Many of the nation’s department stores, already offering sharp markdowns on Christmas merchandise, are chalking up big sales gains early in the holiday shopping season.

But for other major retailers--including discounters, some specialty stores and big general merchandisers such as Montgomery Ward & Co.--the season is generally getting off to a lumbering start.

Analysts say one key reason for this year’s pattern is that many department stores are luring customers away from their competitors with price discounts of as much as 50%.

“There’s less reason to go shopping at the off-price stores,” explained Edward F. Johnson of Johnson Redbook Service. Kurt Barnard, publisher of the Retail Marketing Report newsletter, added that many upscale department stores seem to be doing particularly well. “They’re known as high-quality stores, and when everyone announced markdowns, people raced there.”

Retail industry experts still stood by earlier predictions, however, that overall sales totals for this Christmas season will be up only 5% to 7% from last year’s levels. Moreover, the current wave of price cutting, while giving an early boost to many department stores, is likely to translate into lower profit margins at year-end.

Among the leaders so far is trend-setting Bloomingdale’s, whose sales are up about 25% over last holiday season. “We’re out of the box with a great start,” said spokeswoman Carol Gies.

She said cold weather in the Northeast--which apparently put people in the Christmas mood and inspired heavy sales of coats and sweaters--combined with price cutting to bring in more business. Sources said Chicago-based Marshall Field’s had gains of 15% or more.

In Southern California, the Bullock’s department store chain said it has been pleased with its results. Although figures are expected to be mixed at specialty stores, I. Magnin and Bullocks Wilshire reported an overall sales increase in the “low double-digit” range.

In addition, a few low-price stores are bucking the general trend of weak sales in that category. For instance, Wal-Mart, the discounter based in Bentonville, Ark., is expected to report strong sales when it and other major retailers report November sales totals today.

Meanwhile, however, analysts said there generally appears to be a “restrained” shopping mood.

“People are holding back,” said Irving J. Weintraub, director of the Southern California retail services group of the accounting firm Touche, Ross & Co. “People are waiting to see what kinds of discounts stores will come up with.”

Target Stores, which describes itself as an “upscale discount” chain, has shown sales increases of just 4% to 6% in Southern California and even less nationally, said Julius Jones, the Target executive in charge of the company’s 104 stores in California and Nevada.

“We’re doing fair,” Jones said. “We’re not burning the world up.”

Lawrence Weber, a spokesman for Marshalls Inc., said the off-price clothing chain’s sales have picked up after disappointments in previous months. He also acknowledged, however, that chains such as his face stiffer competition from department stores.

“We offer the exact same goods as a department store,” Weber said. “What we didn’t have before were the department stores having sales all of the time. All of a sudden there’s a competitive environment that the department stores are churning up.”

But, Weber added, financial pressures on the various department store chains involved in mergers and reorganizations over the past few years eventually will force them to back away from sharp discounting. He maintained that the department stores will need to boost their prices to pay off their debts.

Analysts said some of the nation’s biggest general merchandise companies have been hurt by consumers’ lack of interest in big-ticket merchandise.

While Sears declined to comment on its Christmas results, Montgomery Ward said its performance is “basically unchanged” from a year ago. J. C. Penney Co., which has benefited from relying more heavily on apparel and other soft goods instead of big-ticket items, said its sales gains were in the 5% to 8% range.