'Black Friday Is Dying' (fastcompany.com)

A reader shares a report: For years, Black Friday signaled the beginning of Christmas shopping. The day after Thanksgiving was a frantic day of driving to the store at the crack of dawn to fight off other shoppers for great deals. For people who truly hated the ritual, I have some good news for you: Black Friday is going away. That's according to data from GPShopper, which tracks consumer behavior. It turns out, customers are really not into Black Friday. A full 81% of us feel stress surrounding the notion of Black Friday, and 45% of us believe it is the most stressful time of the year. And with online shopping, consumers are increasingly realizing they don't need to do all their shopping on one day. The majority would prefer to shop in the second week of December. Weirdly, a full 12% of consumers would prefer to shop after Christmas, to capitalize on the post-holiday sales, even though their recipients would get their presents a little late.

Comments

Not a very good poll

[jfdavis668]

Black Friday was never a majority event. It was always a dedicated minority who were either looking for great deals or just had nothing better to do that day. I think most people always hated it. Online shopping just gave them another way to shop, instead of just avoiding the mall that day.

Re:"dedicated minority" meaning African Americans?

[mjwx]

When you use the term "dedicated minority", are you referring to African Americans and Hispanic Americans?

I'm pretty certain he meant uninformed tight-arses, not a specific race.

The kind of people who don't realise two things.
1. There is a time cost. Spending 6 hours to save 20% often isn't worth it. Not to mention the cost of fuel.
2. Prices are raised in preparation for the holiday sales, then dropped less than that amount for black Friday.

Savvy people buy this stuff off peak when meaningful discounts are offered to keep stock moving (January or just before the end of the financial year in your nation). Many of us have just given up on stores entirely because we get better prices online. Especially for stuff that goes into stupid prices around Christmas like toys and games, what little of this I had to buy for relatives, I bought months ago.

Fairly certain a savvy black or Latino would have done the same thing. I'm not smart because I'm white, I'm smart because I actually thought about things and planned ahead.