Hundreds of customers camped outside a department store at the crack of dawn. A stampede for the hottest new video game console. Fisticuffs over a coveted flat-screen television.
Black Friday was once a cultural phenomenon: For decades, Americans awoke from their post-Thanksgiving slumber to get an early start on their holiday shopping, crowding into malls and big box stores to snap up heavy discounts on items like electronics.
Yet, at a certain point, Americans started caring less about Black Friday. It is still one of the busiest shopping days of the year, but the convenience of buying online and the ubiquity of “Black Friday” discounts long before the day itself arrives have diluted the actual day’s cultural significance.
Here’s what you need to know about Black Friday and the season of discounts:
Why is it called ‘Black Friday’?
Black Friday got its start in the 1960s, when Philadelphia police officers would complain about the mass crowds that descended on the city for the annual Army-Navy football game, which in those days was played the day after Thanksgiving.
Seeing an opportunity to capitalize on the crowds, retailers adopted the term as a reference to when businesses turn a profit — though they had to combat the negative association with the stock market crash of 1929, known as Black Tuesday.
Before long, as demand for discounts grew, stores started competing with each other to see who could open the earliest, going from 5 a.m. on Friday, to midnight, to opening on Thanksgiving itself. In recent years, that trend has reversed, in part because of employee activism. Finally, Black Friday stopped referring to a single day.
Do I need to get up early to score big deals?
The short answer is no — and you could probably already tell.
The ease of shopping online stopped making the day after Thanksgiving so important, and a Black Friday “creep” is now in full effect. Companies routinely run Black Friday promotions for days, even weeks, before and after the day itself. Amazon and Walmart have offered an entire “Black Friday Week” for certain discounts. Best Buy started its Black Friday sale on Nov. 21, a week before Thanksgiving. Target offered an “early Black Friday” sale two weeks before that. (This week, it’s trying to entice customers with the offer of a Taylor Swift book that commemorates her “Eras” tour. Fans must come into the store on Friday to buy the book; Target will sell it online beginning Saturday.)
“We want to get an earlier start on providing great deals,” Corie Barry, Best Buy’s chief executive, said on an earnings call last week.
What about Cyber Monday?
Cyber Monday, the first Monday after Thanksgiving, is another lucrative day for retailers. The name was coined in 2005 by the National Retail Federation, a trade group, as a way to encourage consumers to shop online with the goal of helping smaller e-commerce companies have their own version of Black Friday.
But today, more people shop online on Black Friday than on Cyber Monday, according to Katherine Cullen, vice president of industry and consumer insights at the National Retail Federation.
Why is Black Friday important to retailers?
Black Friday still matters to consumers and retailers, even if the early-morning crowds have largely vanished. This year, more than 130 million people are expected to shop on Friday, according to a survey from The National Retail Federation.
About two-thirds of those people told the group that they expect to shop in person, something that reflects the fact that for many Americans, it’s just a day off work.
“It’s a holiday that’s always evolved in response to consumer demand,” Ms. Cullen said.
But high inflation in recent years has led to a pullback in spending, and retailers are feeling the effects: This month, Best Buy and Target both released weaker-than-expected earnings reports.
With this problem, the discounts on offer this time of year could help: Consumers are “focusing on deals, and then stocking up when they find them,” said Brian Cornell, Target’s chief executive, during an earnings call last week.
“As a result, we’re seeing a stronger response to promotions than we’ve seen in some time,” Mr. Cornell said.
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