Shopping malls and retailers are expanding hours and slashing prices this weekend to snag as many late holiday shoppers as possible as one key forecast of Christmas sales turned less optimistic.

Some retail centers are opening earlier than usual this weekend, although none will go quite as far as Macy’s department stores, which hopes to generate a bit of moonlight madness by keeping stores throughout Ohio and elsewhere open around the clock from 7 a.m. Friday through midnight Sunday.

“We hope to make it easy for our customers across the country to finish their shopping at any time of day or night …,” Peter Sachse, Macy’s chief stores officer, said in a news release.

Unlike Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day still remains off limits for the area’s largest retail outlets. The malls will close on the holiday, although most are planning an earlier-than-usual opening the day after Christmas in an effort to capture sales from those who want to spend their holiday gift cards — or exchange the ugly gift sweater for a handsome one — as soon as possible.

The final weekend before Christmas is pivotal for retailers. It can make or break the entire holiday sales season, which can account for up to 40 percent of their annual revenue.

After a promising start to the season over the four-day Thanksgiving weekend, sales have slowed.

On Wednesday, ShopperTrak, which analyzes customer traffic at U.S. stores, announced it is cutting its forecast. ShopperTrak officials said they now expect holiday sales to be up 2.5 percent this year, down from an initial projection of 3.3 percent, and also lower than last year’s 3.7 percent increase.

“We were hoping that this past Saturday would be the kick off to good things to come. But it feels like the steam is out of the holiday since Black Friday,” Bill Martin, co-founder of ShopperTrak, told the Associated Press.

David K. Duebber, manager of the Dayton Mall, said it’s too soon to evaluate how successful this season’s shopping season will be, but his mall’s tenants remain optimistic.

“So far, weekdays have been about normal, but weekends have been crazy,” Duebber said. The Dayton Mall will open at 7 a.m. Saturday, Sunday and Monday — an hour earlier than last year — to jump-start sales on the final three days before Christmas.

Worries about weak U.S. job growth and concerns about the “fiscal cliff” negotiations may have prompted Americans spending less. That puts pressure on retailers such as J.C. Penney, Macy’s and other stores, which had been offering fewer discounts this season than they did last year, to step up promotions to lure shoppers.

That means this Christmas shopping season is shaping up to be similar to last year’s: in order to salvage the season, retailers may be forced to offer the kind of heavy discounts that helped boost sales last year, but that also ate away at their profits.

But there may still be some pent-up demand out there. A survey released earlier this week by Visa Inc. showed that 73 percent of consumers still hadn’t finished shopping for Christmas gifts, and those last-minute shoppers will spend an average of $304 in the final days leading up to Christmas.

Based on telephone interviews of more than 1,000 shoppers conducted across the U.S. between Dec. 14 – 16, the Visa survey found that 16 percent of consumers had not yet purchased a single gift and plan to do all of their shopping at the last minute.

Most J.C. Penney stores will be open from 7 a.m. to midnight Saturday and Sunday, and the area’s Target stores will stay open until midnight Saturday and until 11 p.m. Sunday, according to a company spokeswoman and Target’s website.

Kohl’s stores in southwest and west-central Ohio will open as early as 6 a.m. and close at midnight, and will open at 5 a.m. on Wednesday.

Kmart stores will be open until midnight Saturday and Sunday and until 10 p.m. Christmas Eve, while most Sears stores will be open until midnight Friday through Sunday, will close at 6 p.m. Christmas Eve and reopen at 7 a.m. Wednesday, according to the company’s website

The Associated Press contributed to this report.