Black Friday shopping

 Black Friday shopping

The Friday after Thanksgiving, when stores often start off the Christmas shopping season with steep discounts, is known as "Black Friday." Originally used in the 19th and 20th centuries to denote a variety of financial catastrophes, the phrase gained popularity in the 1980s as a way to commemorate a significant day for the retail sector. Although it is not the biggest day of the year for sales volume, Black Friday is usually the busiest day of the year for consumers in the US.

The ability of retail to alter the schedule

The biggest day for retail in the US is Black Friday. View every video related to this topic.

For the most of the 20th century, department stores dominated the American retail scene. As was customary at the time, these large corporations started promoting and decorating for Christmas the day following Thanksgiving, which was then traditionally observed on the last Thursday of November. For many decades, despite the fact that the holiday season brought in the industry's highest sales and profits of the year, no store dared to defy convention and launch Christmas-themed products and displays ahead of Thanksgiving. Was.

When the nation was still reeling from the depths of the Great Depression in 1939, the significance of the post-Thanksgiving holiday shopping season became clear. Thanksgiving was moved to November 30 that year due to the five Thursdays in November, which also reduced the amount of time available for Christmas sales and shopping. Thanksgiving was successfully moved back one week to Thursday, November 23, thanks to lobbying by the retail sector. Thanksgiving now always occurs on the fourth Thursday of November since the US Congress decided to make the adjustment permanent in 1941 after seeing how profitable this additional week of shopping was.

The ability of retail to alter customs

After World War II, the country's highway network grew, suburban areas proliferated, and a plethora of new stores and upscale malls emerged, undermining the dominance of the big department store chains, many of which went bankrupt. were shut down. Due to this, new merchants faced fierce rivalry to draw customers, and some were even prepared to go beyond industry norms in order to get an advantage.

Christmas marketing and decorations started as early as the first week of November in the 1980s and 90s. Still, two things held true: the Friday after Thanksgiving saw a spike in holiday shopping, and the weeks leading up to Christmas continued to provide the majority of merchants' yearly earnings.

Major merchants and the media searched for a strategy to market the day after Thanksgiving in order to create enthusiasm around this significant day. Although it was tried in the early 1980s, Big Friday did not catch on. Then, the term "Black Friday" was coined, most likely in reference to the crazy crowds and awful traffic that were often seen near malls on that particular day.

Source of the surname

Retail historians date the origin of the word to the 1960s, when suburbanites in Philadelphia who were police officers had to work overtime to cope with lawlessness in the city and started dubbing the day following Thanksgiving, Black Friday. Shopkeepers used to swarm the city to begin their shifts. Shop for Christmas gifts or go to Saturday's annual Army-Navy football game. It is evident that shops were first turned off by the term's negative connotations and did not use it extensively, but it stayed as a desirable substitute for "the day after Thanksgiving."

Retailers eventually devised a more widely accepted meaning for the phrase "Black Friday," arguing that it stood for the day when Christmas sales helped the sector return to profitability. The concept originated from the common use of terms in the business sector that are colored red when they allude to losing money and black when they refer to earning a profit. The term "Black Friday" was adopted after the retail sector felt at ease with it.

The Internet's ability to change retail

Retailers were extending their opening hours earlier and earlier during the height of Black Friday in the early 21st century, wagering big on the massive post-Thanksgiving crowds. Some chains even started at midnight on Thanksgiving Day. a custom that was mostly discontinued during the COVID-19 epidemic). When prices dropped dramatically, buyers had the chance to confront or even fight other customers since it may sometimes become violent when someone tried to acquire a video game system or a hard-to-get flat-screen TV.

Black Friday sales in many other areas, including travel and home improvement, have supplanted numerous previous official shopping days in recent years, such as Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday. Several companies have responded to Amazon.com's Midsummer Prime Day, which boosts sales on the site with huge discounts, by offering "Black Friday" offers during the middle of summer.

Now Even in several non-American nations, Black Friday is still a significant day for the retail sector, particularly as a marketing tool. However, the significance of internet purchasing, which is more constant all year long, has lessened Black Friday's previous position as the industry's primary holiday shopping event.