What is BLACK FRIDAY...? 2.
| Black Friday | |
|---|---|
Black Friday shopping at a Target store in November 2008.
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| Observed by | United States, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, India, Panama, United Kingdom, Costa Rica, Romania, Denmark, Sweden, South Africa, France, Norway |
| Type | Commercial |
| Celebrations | Shopping |
| Date | Friday following the fourth Thursday of November |
| Frequency | annual |
| Related to | Thanksgiving, Buy Nothing Day, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday, Christmas, and Boxing Day |
In 2013, approximately 141 million U.S. consumers shopped during Black Friday, spending a total of $57.4 billion, with online sales reaching $1.2 billion.[5]
The day's name originated in Philadelphia, PA, where it originally was used to describe the heavy and disruptive pedestrian and vehicle traffic that would occur on the day after Thanksgiving.[6][7] Use of the term started before 1961 and began to see broader use outside Philadelphia around 1975. Later an alternative explanation was made: that retailers traditionally operated at a financial loss ("in the red") from January through November, and "Black Friday" indicates the point at which retailers begin to turn a profit, or "in the black".[6][8]
For many years, it was common for retailers to open at 6:00 a.m., but in the late 2000s many had crept to 5:00 or even 4:00. This was taken to a new extreme in 2011, when several retailers (including Target, Kohl's, Macy's, Best Buy, and Bealls[9]) opened at midnight for the first time.[10] In 2012, Walmart and several other retailers announced that they would open most of their stores at 8:00 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day (except in states where opening on Thanksgiving is prohibited due to blue laws, such as Massachusetts where they still opened around midnight),[11] prompting calls for a walkout among some workers.[12] There have been reports of violence occurring between shoppers on Black Friday.
It is common for prospective shoppers to camp out over the Thanksgiving holiday in an effort to secure a place in front of the line and thus a better chance at getting desired items; because this poses a significant safety risk (such as the use of propane and generators in the most elaborate cases, and in general, the blocking of emergency access and fire lanes) at least one city has banned this practice.[13]
Shopping
United States
A crowded shopping center on Black Friday
The news media have long described the day after Thanksgiving as the busiest shopping day of the year.[4] In earlier years, this was not actually the case. In the period from 1993 through 2001, for example, Black Friday ranked from fifth to tenth on the list of busiest shopping days, with the last Saturday before Christmas usually taking first place.[3] In 2003, however, Black Friday actually was the busiest shopping day of the year, and it has retained that position every year since, with the exception of 2004, when it ranked second (after Saturday, December 18).[2]
Black Friday is popular as a shopping day for a combination of reasons. As the first day after the last major holiday before Christmas it marks the unofficial beginning of the Christmas season. Additionally, many employers give their employees the day off as part of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. In order to take advantage of this, virtually all retailers in the country, big and small, offer various sales including limited amounts of doorbuster/doorcrasher items to entice traffic. Recent years have seen retailers extend beyond normal hours in order to maintain an edge, or to simply keep up with the competition. Such hours may include opening as early as 12:00 am or remaining open overnight on Thanksgiving Day and beginning sale prices at midnight. In 2010, Toys 'R' Us began their Black Friday sales at 10:00 pm on Thanksgiving Day and further upped the ante by offering free boxes of Crayola crayons and coloring books for as long as supplies lasted. Other retailers, like Sears, Aéropostale, and Kmart, began Black Friday sales early Thanksgiving morning, and ran them through as late as 11:00 pm Friday evening. Forever 21 went in the opposite direction, opening at normal hours on Friday, and running late sales until 2:00 am Saturday morning.[14][15] Historically, it was common for Black Friday sales to extend throughout the following weekend. However, this practice has largely disappeared in recent years, perhaps because of an effort by retailers to create a greater sense of urgency.
The news media usually give heavy play to reports of Black Friday shopping and their implications for the commercial success of the Christmas shopping season, but the relationship between Black Friday sales and retail sales for the full holiday season is quite weak and may even be negative.[16]
On 23 April 2014, .blackfriday joined a growing list of ICANN top-level domains (such as—traditionally -- .com, .net, and .org).[17][18]
Canada
The large population centres on Lake Ontario in Canada have always attracted cross-border shopping into the U.S. states, and as Black Friday became more popular in the U.S., Canadians often flocked to the U.S. because of their cheaper prices and a stronger Canadian dollar. After 2001, many were traveling for the deals across the border. Starting in 2008 and 2009, due to the parity of the Canadian dollar compared with the American dollar, several major Canadian retailers ran Black Friday deals of their own to discourage shoppers from leaving Canada.[19][20]The year 2012 saw the biggest Black Friday to date in Canada, as Canadian retailers embraced it in an attempt to keep shoppers from travelling across the border.[21]
Before the advent of Black Friday in Canada, the most comparable holiday was Boxing Day in terms of retailer impact and consumerism. Black Fridays in the U.S. seem to provide deeper or more extreme price cuts than Canadian retailers, even for the same international retailer. [22]
Mexico
In Mexico, Black Friday was the inspiration for the government and retailing industry to create an annual weekend of discounts and extended credit terms, El Buen Fin, meaning "the good weekend" in Spanish.[23] El Buen Fin has been in existence since 2011 and takes place on November in the weekend prior to the Monday in which the Mexican Revolution holiday is pushed from its original date of November the 20th, as a result of the measure taken by the government of pushing certain holidays to the Monday of their week in order to avoid the workers and students to make a ”larger” weekend (for example, not attending in a Friday after a Thursday holiday, thus making a 4-day weekend). On this weekend, major retailers extend their store hours[24] and offer special promotions, including extended credit terms and price promotions.India
The popularity of Black Friday is also increasing in India. The reason for this is the growing number of e-commerce websites. The big e-commerce retailers in India are trying to emulate the concept of shopping festivals from the United States like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon have been offering discounted products on the major festivals in India. December witnesses the Great Online Shopping Festival (also called GOSF) for three days where people shop from all the major e-commerce players and large FMCG brands.According to Google Trends, the interest for Black Friday is rising every year. Comparing the search volume of the term Black Friday in November 2012 and November 2013, the increase is almost 50 percent (22,200 is the search volume in November 2012 and 33,100 is the search volume in November 2013, according to the Google Adwords)
Panama
In Panama Black Friday was first celebrated in 2012, as a move from the Government to attract local tourism to the countries capital city. During its first year it was believed to have attracted an inflow of about 35,000 regional tourists according to the government's immigration census.United Kingdom
Black Friday is also celebrated in the United Kingdom. One of the UK`s first black Friday events took place in 2003 in Staples Corner London, hosted by UK retailer Currys. The retailers black Friday sale in its staples corner outlet sold laptops and other electronic devices for under £50, since then a lot other major online retailers have followed the trend like Amazon, Littlewoods, Cotswold Outdoor and Apple.[25][26] In 2013 Asda (part of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) announced its "Walmart's Black Friday by ASDA" campaign promoting the Black Friday concept in the UK. A number of other online and instore companies are now celebrating the American tradition, although others appear skeptical, with one trade publication labelling it 'simply an Americanism, which doesn't translate very well.'[27]In 2014, more UK-based retailers adopted the 'Black Friday' marketing scheme than ever. Included are Very.co.uk, John Lewis and Argos. They offer massively discounted prices to entice Christmas shoppers. During Black Friday sales in 2014, police forces were called to stores across the United Kingdom to deal with crowd control issues, assaults, threatening customers and traffic issues.[28] Sir Peter Fahy, Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police, stated: "The events of last night were totally predictable and I am disappointed that stores did not have sufficient security staff on duty."[29] In response to incidents at branches of Tesco, Greater Manchester Police's deputy chief constable Ian Hopkins said that shoppers had behaved in an "appalling" fashion and the lack of planning from retailers was "really disappointing": "They should have planned appropriately with appropriate levels of security to make sure people were safe. They have primary responsibility to keep people safe and they can’t rely on the police to turn up and bail them out and that’s what happened last night."[30]
Other countries
In recent years, Black Friday has been promoted in Australia by online retailers. In 2011, Online Shopping USA hosted an event on Twitter. Twitter users had to use the hashtag #osublackfriday and it allowed them to follow along and tweet favourite deals and discounts from online stores.[31] In 2013, Apple extended its Black Friday deals to Australia. Purchasing online gave customers free shipping and free iTunes gift cards with every purchase. The deals were promoted on their website, it read 'Official Apple Store - One day Apple shopping event Friday, 29 November'.[32]In 2012, after two years of disappointing results, several department stores in Brazil joined their foreign competitors in a successful Black Friday which more than doubled the total revenue in comparison to the previous year. Black Friday is known as Viernes Negro in Costa Rica.[33]
In Germany, Austria and Switzerland, Black Friday Sale is a joint sales initiative by hundreds of online vendors—among them Zalando, Disney Store, Galeria Kaufhof and Sony. Over its first 24 hour run on 28 November 2013, more than 1.2 million people visited the site, making it the single largest online shopping event in German speaking countries.
Starting with 2011 Black Friday become a popular shopping day also in Romania, 2 major IT&C retailers were the first stores to bring this concept to Romania.[34]
2014 marked the introduction in Colombia, Denmark, Sweden [35] and South Africa and France.
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