Black Friday is traditionally known as the day after Thanksgiving, and also retail industry’s name for the first official shopping day of the holiday season. Black Friday is also a day when many stores offer huge savings and deals to their shoppers. Last year, the weekend after Thanksgiving saw over 147 million shoppers. From those shoppers, about 14% were out and waiting in lines before 4 a.m. The Chicago Premium Outlets in Aurora also set up early for the holiday shopping, starting holiday sales at midnight with the slogan “Midnight Madness.” In order to prepare for the holiday shopping, shoppers may go online to websites such as blackfriday.info or black-friday.net. These websites include information about what deals will be where and compare the price cuts. They also include tips such as on Sears “door buster” deals that will only be offered for a limited number of hours. Last year Wal-Mart threatened legal action against these websites that spoiled the highly anticipated deals to customers, wanting to keep the release closer to Black Friday.
Last year some of the most popular stores during Black Friday weekend were Best Buy, Toys R’ Us, and Circuit City. Due to claiming bankruptcy recently, however, Circuit City’s outlook on the shopping season has changed. Without immediate relief, the company is concerned that it will not receive goods for Black Friday and the rest of the holiday season which will in turn hurt both the company and its stock holders. The same can be said for many other stores who see that as the economy worsens, retail projections for Black Friday seem lower than normal. It is predicted that stores will have big discounts, but shelves will not be as full as usual due to the assumption that people will not spend as much this holiday season in low economic times.
Consumer spending accounts for about two thirds of the nation’s economy, and store projections for the coming year are below normal. Although retailers are predicting that sales in November and December will be up12%, it is still a slow down compared to past years.
Due to the predictions for the holiday shopping season, stores such as Sears have changed what they would be putting on discounts. It is predicted that people will buy more essential items as gifts this year instead of luxury items. Customers can expect to see home appliances on sale, right next to the perfect gift they have been searching for.
By Alexandra Pastore, staff writer
Photo courtesy of gizmodo
