The US again leads the way in absurdity. Black Friday is a US tradition[1] of massive one-day sales every year on the day after Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November and therefore the Friday is inevitably swallowed up into a mega-weekend like so much turkey. And it turns out that there is nothing that Americans like more after a wild oversize[2] meal than wild carnivorous shopping. Black Friday has over the years developed into the beginning of the end-of-year holiday shopping season and embraced by both shoppers and retailers as the arrival of Christmas cheer.

In the Bag

But there’s more to Black Friday that a bunch of overfed Americans stuffing their trolleys with bargains. The interesting part to Black Friday is in how it is run.
As an aside, the four years that I spent working for a large[3] retailer was some of the most interesting of my career. Retail is a fascinating business, not only because it is invariably the largest sector in any economy, but because involves such base merchandising and marketing techniques.
But back to business; the reason why Black Friday is such a bizarre thing is because it runs for a single day. It is one day of insane sales and rabid bargain consumption. And even more incredible it isn’t preceded by a deluge of advertising. Black Friday adverts are traditionally only published the day before, on Thanksgiving. So with only one day’s advertising US retailers manage to generate enough sales to have a measurable impact on the day’s Dow Jones results. So just how do they turn a post-holiday Friday into one of the biggest shopping days of the entire year? Easy, appeal the three m’s of American culture; more, more, more.
The first more is more bargains. Big box retailers such as Wal-Mart and Best Buy throttle every last discount cent from their suppliers[4] to offer buyers insane bargains like $230 notebook computers and $200 mega-televisions. The second more is more time to shop. Stores open at 5am on Black Friday. That’s right, 5am. The third more is more everything else. Retailers are laying on everything from in-store breakfasts to complimentary shuttles that will pick you up at your house and drive you 40 minutes to where the really big stores are.

Put these mores together and consumers have no chance. Imagine the scene; dad has his pants unbuckled in front of the TV, a teenage son withdraws his hand from the front of his girlfriend’s pants before stuffing his face with a handful of turkey and mom has the noospaper open: ‘G-o-lley! At 42 inch TV for $199! Doors open at 5!’.

The result is that as many as 132.9 million Americans are expected to hit the stores Friday, with 55.1 million of them expected to definitely shop.

So more it is then, more food, more shopping, more happiness, more death.
But sadly more is never enough; which is why Wal-Mart now start their Black Friday one day earlier(on Thanksgiving) and why the new hot shopping trend is Cyber Monday, the Monday after Black Friday when retailers dump, on-line, all the stuff they didn’t dump on Black Friday. See where this is going? Thanksgiving Thursday, Black Friday, Sunny Saturday, Super Sunday, Cyber Monday, Two-fer-one Tuesday, World domination Wednesday.

Around the Corner

The urban legend of Black Friday being the biggest shopping day of the year is not true, but it does consistently rank in the top half of the top ten. That honour goes to the last Saturday before Christmas, which makes sense. It is the absolute peak of the run-up to the biggest holiday in the world, a holiday built around buying gifts for other people.
But dig on Black Friday; the fourth biggest shopping day of 2002 and there’s no gift giving involved; no swell of valentine’s emotion, no halloween fun. What it is, is a sale that lasts a single day, preceded by just one day of advertising. It is – all you can eat.

I’ll leave the last gullet-stuffing word to Linda Ballew, grandmother and Wal-Mart shopper who steers two shopping carts down those wide and friendly aisles: “It’s just exciting, it’s wonderful to get out because it just puts you in the Christmas spirit”.

[1] the fact that I have to use that word in this context is absurd in itself.
[2] the fact that I use this word when referring to meals in the home of the Big Gulp is just as absurd.
[3] by South African standards – i.e. minuscule by global standards
[4] you didn’t think that they would absorb the cost of their ludicrous discounts themselves did you? Ha ha, no. Some Indonesian kid is being banged for that buck. Although, I should correct myself; the situation is not that simplistic. In truth the cost of the bargains will be offset by a pickup in sales of other normal-priced items and it is likely that the bargain items are part of much larger holiday season deals backed by volume rebates. But, no, Wal-Mart is not hurting from those $200 TVs.