Every year we suffer through the so-called "Black Friday", the day immediately after Thanksgiving that's supposed to kick off the Christmas shopping season and is also traditionally the single biggest shopping day of the year. This means it's a very important day for retailers, of course, but if you dig into the numbers, Black Friday is one of the worst days for retail establishments, not one of the best.
Let me explain...
Read the papers, you'll see that across the United States people who went shopping at all on Black Friday were very careful about their purchases and were much more likely to go into a store and buy the one or two super-specials than a basketful of goods.
The result? Instead of getting a nice boost on profits and a good jump-start on Christmas / holiday shopping, the entire experience was more likely a complete bust for retailers, losing them, rather than earning them money.
While some analysts will doubtless peg this to the 2008 recession, I suggest instead that it's the inevitable result of the increasing commoditization of our world, the reduction of everything to its cheapest possible manifestation.
This is what Linda Sanford and I wrote about in our book
Meanwhile, we'll have to see. I predict that retailers will report that gross revenue from Black Friday sales were okay, but that profit from these sales was down significantly from prior years. And next year, even if the economy is in better shape, won't jump back.
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