Black Friday 2014 explained - retailers gearing up for day of deals
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Retailers have the Philadelphia Police Department to thank for Black Friday. It was the American police who, during the 1950s and 1960s, gave the name to the day after Thanksgiving because of the chaos that ensued in the city as shoppers flocked to the high street sales while spectators travelled to the annual Army vs Navy American football match.
Shops in Philadelphia pushed for the day to be known by the more flattering
“Big Friday”. For them, the day after Thanksgiving was vital – it was the
day that shoppers started their Christmas shopping and they wanted as many
people as possible through their doors.
Indeed, the day was so crucial that retailers pushed the US government to move Thanksgiving to earlier in November so there was more time for Christmas shopping.
The holiday used to be celebrated on the last Thursday in November, but in
1939 this was the last day of the month. After lobbying from retailers,
President Roosevelt moved the day forward by a week. Two years later it was
confirmed that Thanksgiving would in future always be celebrated on the
fourth Thursday in November, rather than the last.
As the years went by, Philadelphia’s nickname for the day began to catch on
around the US. Black Friday gained other meanings too, with industry experts
claiming it also referred to the fact it was the first day of the year that
retailers finally moved from being in the red to generating a profit.
In the UK, however, Black Friday meant little until 2010. Before then, the
only knowledge most shoppers had about the US craze was the television
images of consumers fighting to get into the leading stores, such as Macy’s
in New York. The nearest phenomenon in the UK was Boxing Day and its
ubiquitous sales.
But the online shopping revolution and the rise of multinational retailers eventually brought Black Friday across the Atlantic.
Black Friday hit critical mass in Britain last year when Asda, which is owned by America’s biggest retailer Walmart, ran flash promotions within stores. There were chaotic scenes as consumers rushed to pick up tablet computers for £49, 32-inch LED televisions for £99, and a Black & Decker drill for £39, all of which were sold on a first-come first-served basis.
However, this year, the day is expected to be even busier. Black Friday 2014, scheduled for November 28, should be the biggest online shopping day ever in the UK.
But the online shopping revolution and the rise of multinational retailers eventually brought Black Friday across the Atlantic.
Black Friday hit critical mass in Britain last year when Asda, which is owned by America’s biggest retailer Walmart, ran flash promotions within stores. There were chaotic scenes as consumers rushed to pick up tablet computers for £49, 32-inch LED televisions for £99, and a Black & Decker drill for £39, all of which were sold on a first-come first-served basis.
However, this year, the day is expected to be even busier. Black Friday 2014, scheduled for November 28, should be the biggest online shopping day ever in the UK.
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Black Friday is the day following Thanksgiving Day in the United States (the fourth Thursday of November), often regarded as the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. In recent years, most major retailers have opened very early and offered promotional sales to kick off the holiday shopping season, similar to Boxing Day sales in many Commonwealth nations. Black Friday is not a holiday, but California and some other states observe "The Day After Thanksgiving" as a holiday for state government employees, sometimes in lieu of another federal holiday such as Columbus Day. Many non-retail employees and schools have both Thanksgiving and the day after off, followed by a weekend, thereby increasing the number of potential shoppers. It has routinely been the busiest shopping day of the year since 2005, although news reports, which at that time were inaccurate, have described it as the busiest shopping day of the year for a much longer period of time.
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.
The day's name originated in , where it originally was used to describe the heavy and disruptive pedestrian and vehicle traffic which would occur on the day after Thanksgiving. 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".
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) opened at midnight for the first time. 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), prompting calls for a walkout among some workers.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.
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