Even Black Friday is Different Now...

Black Friday – an American thing - is the day following Thanksgiving Day and has become known as the tradition start of the holiday shopping season. The term has become more common in other parts of the country since 2000.

This has been going now for 20 years – yes that’s right – since the early 1980s when a trend began to emerge that retailers traditionally operated at a financial loss for most of the year and made their profit during the holiday season, beginning on the day after Thanksgiving. 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). Hence the term, “Black Friday.”

This year, the downward trend has continued for many retailers, both traditional and online. Sales are down sharply compared to several years ago for many brick and mortar stores and the holiday season including Black Friday is shaping up to be the last chance for retailers to make up for the lackluster sales they've had for most of the year.

With Black Friday once again falling later in the month, and less than a month before Christmas, retailers have been trying to get consumers shopping earlier rather than counting on Black Friday and the few remaining weekends in December to provide most of their sales. Online retailers, as well as brick & mortar retailers with e-commerce sites have had the advantage here as they have been promoting online sales since Halloween.

Look for retailers to embrace social networking this year as a part of their strategy for the holiday season. Look for exclusive deals and contests to appear on stores’ Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. And now with the widespread use of smartphones, consumers might choose to stay in bed Friday morning and just buy stuff while still under the covers. The super-sites for Black Friday commerce is just amazing such as:

BlackFriday.com
GottaDeal.com
BlackFriday.info
BlackFriday.net
BlackFriday2010
CouponCabin.com
Walletpop.com

And yet, many people will avoid this and yield to more old-fashioned Thanksgiving traditions – like getting up at midnight and waiting 4 hours in line in the dark cold with other eager consumers obsessed with getting that must-have item. Waiting in long traffic jams and checkout lines (“I hope the person in front of me doesn’t use cash!”); bumping into herds of people & bags on escalators, elevators, stairs and halls; and let’s not even talk about rest rooms.

Don’t you just love the holidays with feelings of peace, joy and love?

I wonder if there’s an app for that….