From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia
This article is about the United States
shopping event called Black Friday. For other uses, see
Black
Friday.
Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving
in the United States,
where it is the beginning of the traditional Christmas
shopping season. Since Thanksgiving falls on the fourth Thursday in
November in the United
States, Black Friday may be as early as the 23rd and as late as the
29th of November. Black Friday is not an official holiday, but many
employers give the day off, increasing the number of potential
shoppers. Retailers often decorate for the Christmas
season weeks beforehand. Many retailers open very early
(typically 5 am or even earlier) and offer doorbuster deals
and loss leaders to draw
people to their stores. Although Black Friday, as the first
shopping day after Thanksgiving, has served as the unofficial
beginning of the Christmas season at least since the start of the
modern Macy's
Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1924, the term "Black Friday" has
been traced back only to the 1970s. "Black Friday" was
originally so named because of the heavy traffic on that day (see
below), although most contemporary uses of the term refer instead
to it as the beginning of the period in which retailers are in the
black (i.e., turning a profit)[citation
needed].
The news media frequently refer to Black Friday as the busiest
retail shopping day of the year, but this is not always accurate.
While it has been one of the busiest days in terms of customer
traffic,[1][2]
in terms of actual sales volume, from 1993 through 2001 Black
Friday was usually the fifth to tenth busiest day.[3]
In 2002 and 2004, however, Black Friday ranked second
place.[4]
The busiest retail shopping day of the year in the United
States (in terms of both sales and customer traffic) usually
has been the Saturday before Christmas.[5]
In 2003 and 2005, however, Black Friday actually did reach
first place.[6]
In many cities it is not uncommon to see shoppers lined up hours
before stores with big sales open. Once inside, the stores shoppers
often rush and grab, as many stores have only a few of the big draw
items. Electronics and popular toys are often the most sought-after
items and may be sharply discounted. Because of the
shoulder-to-shoulder crowds, many choose to stay home and avoid the
hectic shopping experience. The local media often will cover the
event, mentioning how early the shoppers began lining up at various
stores and providing video of the shoppers standing in line and
later leaving with their purchased items. Traditionally Black
Friday sales were intended for those shopping for Christmas gifts.
For some particularly popular items, some people shop at these
sales in order to get deep discounts on items they can then resell,
typically online.
[
edit] Origin of the name
"Black Friday"
[
edit] Stress from large
crowds
The earliest uses of "Black Friday" refer to the heavy traffic
on that day, an implicit comparison to the extremely stressful and
chaotic experience of Black
Tuesday (the 1929 stock-market crash) or other black days.
The earliest known references to "Black Friday" (in this sense) are
from two newspaper articles from November 29,
1975,
that explicitly refer to the day's hectic nature and heavy traffic.
The first reference is in an article entitled "Army vs. Navy: A
Dimming Splendor," in The New York
Times:
Philadelphia police and bus drivers call it "Black Friday" -
that day each year between Thanksgiving Day and the Army-Navy game.
It is the busiest shopping and traffic day of the year in the
Bicentennial City as the Christmas list is checked off and the
Eastern college football season nears conclusion.
The derivation is made even more explicit in an Associated
Press article entitled "Folks on Buying Spree Despite Down
Economy," which ran in the Titusville
Herald on the same day:
Store aisles were jammed. Escalators were nonstop people. It was
the first day of the Christmas shopping season and despite the
economy, folks here went on a buying spree. . . . . "That's why the
bus drivers and cab drivers call today 'Black Friday,'" a sales
manager at Gimbels said as she watched a traffic cop trying to
control a crowd of jaywalkers. "They think in terms of headaches it
gives them."
Both articles have a Philadelphia
dateline, suggesting
the term may have originated in that area.
[
edit] Accounting
practice
More recently, an assumption has been circulated that the term
originates from the theory that retailers traditionally operated at
a financial loss for most of the year (January through November)
and made their profit during the holiday season. When this would be
recorded in the financial records, once-common accounting practices
would use red ink to show negative amounts and black ink to show
positive amounts. Black Friday, under this theory, is the beginning
of the period where retailers would no longer have losses (the red)
and instead take in the year's profits (the black). (Retailers'
profitability varies, but some retailers are indeed dependent on
the holiday season for their profits.) This sense has been traced
back to a November 26, 1982,
broadcast of ABC News'
World News
Tonight, which said:
Some merchants label the day after Thanksgiving Black Friday
because business today can mean the difference between red ink and
black on the ledgers. But this year hefty sales are vital not only
to the stores but to the entire economy.
The primary flaw in this theory is that retailers (and their
stockholders) would assume an acceptable loss for nearly eleven
months out of the year in the hopes of finally earning a profit in
the last five weeks. An examination of the quarterly SEC filings of
any major retailer such as Wal-Mart [1] or
Target [2]
clearly shows that retailers intend to and actually do make profits
during every quarter of the year. Because the heavy traffic
etymology is contemporaneous with the earliest known uses of the
term, while the black ink theory apparently was not suggested until
several years later, the accounting practice origin is likely to be
Urban Legend.
[
edit] History
The history of the day after thanksgiving being the official
start of the holiday shopping season is linked together strongly
with the idea of Santa Claus
parades. They are merged with a parade celebrating
Thanksgiving. These parades, though mainly a celebration of
thanksgiving, include an appearance by Santa at the end with the
idea that 'Santa has arrived' or 'Santa is just around the
corner'.
In the late 19th century and early 20th century, many Santa
parades / Thanksgiving day parades were sponsored by department
stores. These include the Toronto
Santa Claus Parade sponsored by Eaton's and the
Macy's
Thanksgiving Day Parade sponsored by Macy's. Department
stores would use the parades to launch a big advertising push.
Eventually it just became an unwritten rule that no store would try
doing Christmas advertising before the parade was over. Therefore,
the day after thanksgiving became the day when the shopping season
officially started.
Later on, the fact that this marked the official start of the
shopping season led to controversy. In 1939, America was suffering
through the great depression. Retail shops would have liked to have
a longer shopping season, but no store wanted to break with
tradition and be the one to start advertising before thanksgiving.
President Roosevelt moved the date for thanksgiving up a week
leading to much anger by the public who wound up having to change
holiday plans. Folks started referring to the change as
Franksgiving.
[
edit] Black Friday on the
Internet
[
edit] Advertising tip
sites
Some websites offer information about Black Friday specials up
to a month in advance. The text listings of items and prices are
usually accompanied by pictures of the actual ad circulars. These
are either leaked by insiders or intentionally released by large
retailers to give consumers insight and allow them time to
plan.
In recent years, some retailers (including Wal-Mart,
Target
Corporation, OfficeMax, and
Staples,
Inc.) have claimed that the advertisements they send in
advance of Black Friday and the prices included in those
advertisements are copyrighted.[7]
Some of these retailers have used the
take-down system of the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act as a means to remove the offending
price listings. Some believe this policy is derived from a fear
that competitors will slash prices, and shoppers may comparison
shop. The actual validity of the claim that prices form a protected
work of authorship is uncertain as the prices themselves (though
not the advertisements) might be considered a fact in which case
they would not receive the same level of protection as a
copyrighted work.[8]
The benefit of threatening Internet sites with a DMCA based
lawsuit has proved tenuous at best. While some sites have complied
with the requests, others have either ignored the threats or simply
continued to post the information under the name of a similar
sounding fictional retailer. However, as the DMCA allows websites
24 hours to comply with the
take-down notice or file a counter notice, careful timing may
mitigate the take-down notice. An Internet
service provider in 2003 brought suit against Best
Buy, Kohl's, and Target,
arguing that the take-down notice provisions of the DMCA are
unconstitutional. The court dismissed the case, ruling that only
the third-party posters of the advertisements, and not the ISP
itself, would have standing to
sue the retailers.
[9]
[
edit] Cyber Monday
-
Main article:
Cyber
Monday
The term Cyber Monday, a neologism invented by
the National
Retail Federation's Shop.org division, refers to the Monday
immediately following Black Friday, which unofficially marks the
beginning of the Christmas online shopping
season.
In recent years, Cyber Monday has become a busy day for online
retailers, with some sites offering low prices and other promotions
on that day. Like Black Friday, Cyber Monday is often wrongly said
to be the busiest shopping day of the year for online shoppers,
although in reality several days later in the holiday shopping
season are busier.
Earlier in the 2000s the day had more
significance (though it was not named as such until 2005) as most people
did not have broadband connections
at home and presumably used the first day back at work from the
long Thanksgiving
weekend to take advantage of such connections in the office to do
online shopping. In response, many retailers now encourage people
to do their online shopping at home on Thanksgiving
Day itself by offering their Black Friday
sales online that day.
[
edit] Buy Nothing
Day
-
Buy Nothing Day is organized by Adbusters magazine,
intentionally as a counter-act to "Black Friday". Originally
organized in Vancouver, Canada in September of 1992, in 1997 it was
moved in North America to the same day as Black Friday ("Black
Friday" doesn't exist in Canada, where
Thanksgiving is celebrated in early October). Outside of North
America, Buy Nothing Day is celebrated on the following Saturday.
Occasional discussion has pointed out that, because of the
anti-action of the event, it is very easy for people who are
avoiding shopping on this day to "observe" the protest.
[
edit] References
- ^
ShopperTrak (October 4, 2006). ShopperTrak Predicts Top 10 Shopping Days of Holiday
2006. Press Release.
- ^
International Council of Shopping Centers. Top Ten Holiday Shopping Days 2004.
- ^
Purdue University News Service. "Christmas Shopping Facts and Figures", Press
Release, November 22, 2000.
- ^
International Council of Shopping Centers. Holiday Watch: Media Guide 2006 Holiday Facts and
Figure.
- ^
Barbara and David P. Mikkelson (November 20, 2006). Black Friday. Urban
Legends Reference Pages.
- ^
International Council of Shopping Centers. Holiday Watch: Media Guide 2006 Holiday Facts and
Figure.
- ^
"Sale fight no fright for area Web site," Charleston Gazette
& Daily Mail (Nov. 26, 2002).
- ^
Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co.,
499 U.S. 340 (1991).
- ^
Fatwallet, Inc. v. Best Buy Enterprises Services, 2004 WL
793548 (N.D.Ill. 2004).