Black Friday (shopping)
Encyclopedia
Black Friday is the day following Thanksgiving Day
in the United States
, traditionally the beginning of the Christmas
shopping
season. On this day, most major retailers open extremely early, often at 4 a.m., or earlier, and offer promotional sales to kick off the shopping season, similar to Boxing Day
sales in many Commonwealth Nations. Black Friday is not actually a holiday, but some non-retail employers give their employees the day off, 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.
The day's name originated in Philadelphia, 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 1966 and began to see broader use outside Philadelphia around 1975. Later an alternative explanation began to be offered: that "Black Friday" indicates the point at which retailers begin to turn a profit, or are "in the black".
For many years, it was common for retailers to open at 6:00, 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, Kohls, Macy's
, Best Buy
, and Bealls
) opened at midnight for the first time. An online petition with more than 200,000 virtual signatures is aimed at asking Target not to open so early. Walmart opened at 10:00 pm on Thanksgiving and Toys 'R' Us at 9:00 pm. In 2010, Sears was open on Thanksgiving Day.
Because Thanksgiving falls on the fourth Thursday in November in the United States, the day after occurs between the 23rd and the 29th of November.
Black Friday is popular as a shopping day for a combination of several reasons. As the first day after the last major holiday before Christmas it inaugurates the Christmas season. Additionally, many employers give their employees the day off as part of Thanksgiving leave, increasing the potential number of shoppers. In order to take advantage of this, virtually all retailers in the country, big and small, offer various sales. Recent years have seen retailers extend beyond normal hours in order to maintain an edge, or to simply keep up with competition. Such hours may include opening as early as 12:00 a.m. or remaining open overnight on Thanksgiving Day and beginning sales prices at midnight. In 2010, Toys 'R' Us began their Black Friday sales at 10:00 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day and further upped the ante by offering free boxes of Crayola
crayons and coloring books for as long as supplies lasted. Other retailers, like Sears, Aéropostale
, and Kmart
, began Black Friday sales early Thanksgiving morning, and ran them through as late as 11:00 p.m. Friday evening. Forever 21
went in the opposite direction, opening at normal hours on Friday, and running late sales until 2:00 a.m. Saturday morning. Historically, it was common for Black Friday sales to extend throughout the following weekend. However, this practice has largely disappeared in recent years, perhaps because of an effort by retailers to create a greater sense of urgency.
The huge population centers around Lake Ontario
in Canada
have always attracted cross border shopping into the U.S. states, and as Black Friday became more popular in the U.S. after 2001, many were traveling for the deals across the border. In 2009 several major Canadian retailers had their own version of the day by running promotions to discourage shoppers from leaving for the U.S. Canada's Boxing Day is comparable to Black Friday in terms of retailer impact and consumerism, but Black Fridays in the U.S. seem to provide deeper or more extreme price cuts than Canadian retailers, even for the same international retailer.
More recently, Black Friday has been exported to nations outside of North America
such as Australia and the United Kingdom by major online retailers like Amazon or Apple. In 2011, IBM reported online Black Friday sales were up 24.3% according to a study that included 500 retailers.
as a term has been used in multiple contexts, going back to the nineteenth century, where it was associated with a financial crisis in 1869
in the United States. The earliest known reference to "Black Friday" to refer to the day after Thanksgiving was made in a 1966 publication on the day's significance in Philadelphia:
The term Black Friday began to get wider exposure around 1975, as shown by two newspaper articles from November 29, 1975, both datelined Philadelphia. The first reference is in an article entitled "Army vs. Navy: A Dimming Splendor," in The New York Times
:
The derivation is also clear in an Associated Press
article entitled "Folks on Buying Spree Despite Down Economy," which ran in the Titusville
Herald on the same day:
The term's spread was gradual, however, and in 1985 the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that retailers in Cincinnati and Los Angeles were still unaware of the term.
, is from 1981, again from Philadelphia, and presents the "black ink" theory as one of several competing possibilities:
The Christmas shopping season is of enormous importance to American retailers and, while most retailers intend to and actually do make profits during every quarter of the year, some retailers are so dependent on the Christmas shopping season that the quarter including Christmas produces all the year's profits and compensates for losses from other quarters.
shopping at Best Buy
was recorded on video assaulting another shopper. Unruly Walmart shoppers at a store outside Columbus, Ohio
, quickly flooded in the doors at opening, pinning several employees against stacks of merchandise. Nine shoppers in a California mall were injured, including an elderly woman who had to be taken to the hospital, when the crowd rushed to grab gift certificates that had been released from the ceiling.
In 2008 a crowd of approximately 2,000 shoppers in Valley Stream, New York
, waited outside for the 5:00 a.m. opening of the local Walmart. As opening time approached the crowd grew anxious and when the doors were opened the crowd pushed forward, breaking the door down, and trampling a 34 year old employee to death. The shoppers did not appear concerned with the victim's fate, expressing refusal to halt their stampede when other employees attempted to intervene and help the injured employee, complaining that they had been waiting in the cold and were not willing to wait any longer. Shoppers had begun assembling as early as 9:00 the evening before. Even when police arrived and attempted to render aid to the injured man, shoppers continued to pour in, shoving and pushing the officers as they made their way into the store. Several other people incurred minor injuries, including a pregnant woman who had to be taken to the hospital. The incident may be the first case of a death occurring during Black Friday sales; according to the National Retail Federation
, "We are not aware of any other circumstances where a retail employee has died working on the day after Thanksgiving."
During Black Friday 2010, a Madison, Wisconsin
woman was arrested outside of a Toys 'R' Us store after cutting in line, and threatening to shoot other shoppers who tried to object. A Toys for Tots
volunteer in Georgia was stabbed by a shoplifter. An Indianapolis
woman was arrested after causing a disturbance by arguing with other Wal-Mart shoppers. She had been asked to leave the store, but refused. A man was arrested at a Florida Wal-Mart on drug and weapons charges after other shoppers waiting in line for the store to open noticed that he was carrying a handgun
and reported the matter to police. He was discovered to also be carrying two knives and a pepper spray
grenade. A man in Buffalo, New York
, was trampled when doors opened at a Target
store and unruly shoppers rushed in, in an episode reminiscent of the deadly 2008 Wal-Mart stampede.
On Black Friday 2011, a woman used pepper spray
on fellow shoppers, causing minor injuries to at least 10 people who had been waiting hours for Black Friday savings. It was later reported that the incident caused 20 injuries. The incident started as people waited in line for the new Xbox 360
. A witness said a woman with two children in tow became upset with the way people were pushing in line. The witness said she pulled out pepper spray and sprayed the other people in line. Another account stated: "The store had brought out a crate of discounted Xbox video game players, and a crowd had formed to wait for the unwrapping, when the woman began spraying people 'in order to get an advantage,' according to the police. In an incident outside a Walmart store in San Leandro, California
, one man was wounded after being shot following Black Friday shopping at about 1:45am.
In the late 19th century and early 20th century, many Santa parades or Thanksgiving Day parades were sponsored by department stores. These include the Toronto Santa Claus Parade
, in Canada, sponsored by Eaton's
, and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade
sponsored by Macy's
. Department stores would use the parades to launch a big advertising push. Eventually it just became an unwritten rule that no store would try doing Christmas advertising before the parade was over. Therefore, the day after Thanksgiving became the day when the shopping season officially started.
Later on, the fact that this marked the official start of the shopping season led to controversy. In 1939, retail shops would have liked to have a longer shopping season, but no store wanted to break with tradition and be the one to start advertising before Thanksgiving. President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the date for Thanksgiving one week earlier, leading to much anger by the public who wound up having to change holiday plans. Some even refused the change, resulting in the U.S. citizens celebrating Thanksgiving on two separate days. Some started referring to the change as Franksgiving
.
refers to the online version of Black Friday. According to Hitwise in 2010,
In recent years, some retailers (including Walmart, Target
, OfficeMax
, Big Lots
, and Staples
) have claimed that the advertisements they send in advance of Black Friday and the prices included in those advertisements are copyrighted and are trade secret
s.
Some of these retailers have used the take-down system
of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
as a means to remove the offending price listings. This policy may come from the fear that competitors will slash prices, and shoppers may comparison shop. The actual validity of the claim that prices form a protected work of authorship is uncertain as the prices themselves (though not the advertisements) might be considered a fact in which case they would not receive the same level of protection as a copyrighted work.
The benefit of threatening Internet sites with a DMCA based lawsuit has proved tenuous at best. While some sites have complied with the requests, others have either ignored the threats or simply continued to post the information under the name of a similar sounding fictional retailer. However, as the DMCA allows websites 24 hours to comply with the take-down notice
or file a counter notice, careful timing may mitigate the take-down notice. An Internet service provider
in 2003 brought suit against Best Buy
, Kohl's
, and Target Corporation
, arguing that the take-down notice provisions of the DMCA are unconstitutional. The court dismissed the case, ruling that only the third-party posters of the advertisements, and not the ISP itself, would have standing
to sue the retailers.
Usage of Black Friday Advertising Tip sites and buying direct varies by state in the U.S., influenced in large part by differences in shipping costs and whether a state has a sales tax. However, in recent years, the convenience of online shopping has increased the number of cross-border shoppers seeking bargains from outside of the U.S., especially from Canada. Statistics Canada indicates that online cross-border shopping by Canadians has increased by about 300M a year since 2002. The complex nature of additional fees such as taxes, duties and brokerage can make calculating the final cost of cross-border Black Friday deals difficult. Dedicated cross-border shopping solutions such as the Canadian shopping platform Wishabi
and Canada Post’s Borderfree exist to mitigate the problem through estimation of the various cost involved.
division Shop.org, refers to the Monday immediately following Black Friday based on a trend that retailers began to recognize in 2003 and 2004. Retailers noticed that many consumers, who were too busy to shop over the Thanksgiving weekend or did not find what they were looking for, shopped for bargains online that Monday from home or work.
releases figures on the sales for each Thanksgiving
weekend.
Thanksgiving (United States)
Thanksgiving, or Thanksgiving Day, is a holiday celebrated in the United States on the fourth Thursday in November. It has officially been an annual tradition since 1863, when, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving to be celebrated on Thursday,...
in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, traditionally the beginning of the Christmas
Christmas
Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...
shopping
Shopping
Shopping is the examining of goods or services from retailers with the intent to purchase at that time. Shopping is an activity of selection and/or purchase. In some contexts it is considered a leisure activity as well as an economic one....
season. On this day, most major retailers open extremely early, often at 4 a.m., or earlier, and offer promotional sales to kick off the shopping season, similar to Boxing Day
Boxing Day
Boxing Day is a bank or public holiday that occurs on 26 December, or the first or second weekday after Christmas Day, depending on national or regional laws. It is observed in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and some other Commonwealth nations. In Ireland, it is recognized as...
sales in many Commonwealth Nations. Black Friday is not actually a holiday, but some non-retail employers give their employees the day off, 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.
The day's name originated in Philadelphia, where it originally was used to describe the heavy and disruptive pedestrian and vehicle traffic
Traffic
Traffic on roads may consist of pedestrians, ridden or herded animals, vehicles, streetcars and other conveyances, either singly or together, while using the public way for purposes of travel...
which would occur on the day after Thanksgiving. Use of the term started before 1966 and began to see broader use outside Philadelphia around 1975. Later an alternative explanation began to be offered: that "Black Friday" indicates the point at which retailers begin to turn a profit, or are "in the black".
For many years, it was common for retailers to open at 6:00, 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, Kohls, Macy's
Macy's
Macy's is a U.S. chain of mid-to-high range department stores. In addition to its flagship Herald Square location in New York City, the company operates over 800 stores in the United States...
, Best Buy
Best Buy
Best Buy Co., Inc. is an American specialty retailer of consumer electronics in the United States, accounting for 19% of the market. It also operates in Mexico, Canada & China. The company's subsidiaries include Geek Squad, CinemaNow, Magnolia Audio Video, Pacific Sales, and, in Canada operates...
, and Bealls
Bealls
Bealls is a United States retail corporation of over 500 stores founded in 1915 in Bradenton, Florida. Bealls consists of two chains, Bealls Department Stores and Bealls Outlet Stores, with Bealls Inc. serving as the parent corporation. The group is not affiliated with Bealls Texas, although the...
) opened at midnight for the first time. An online petition with more than 200,000 virtual signatures is aimed at asking Target not to open so early. Walmart opened at 10:00 pm on Thanksgiving and Toys 'R' Us at 9:00 pm. In 2010, Sears was open on Thanksgiving Day.
Because Thanksgiving falls on the fourth Thursday in November in the United States, the day after occurs between the 23rd and the 29th of November.
Shopping
The news media have long described the day after Thanksgiving as the busiest shopping day of the year. In earlier years, this was not actually the case. In the period from 1993 through 2001, for example, Black Friday ranked from fifth to tenth on the list of busiest shopping days, with the Saturday before Christmas usually taking first place. In 2003, however, Black Friday actually was the busiest shopping day of the year, and it has retained that position every year since except 2004, when it ranked second.Black Friday is popular as a shopping day for a combination of several reasons. As the first day after the last major holiday before Christmas it inaugurates the Christmas season. Additionally, many employers give their employees the day off as part of Thanksgiving leave, increasing the potential number of shoppers. In order to take advantage of this, virtually all retailers in the country, big and small, offer various sales. Recent years have seen retailers extend beyond normal hours in order to maintain an edge, or to simply keep up with competition. Such hours may include opening as early as 12:00 a.m. or remaining open overnight on Thanksgiving Day and beginning sales prices at midnight. In 2010, Toys 'R' Us began their Black Friday sales at 10:00 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day and further upped the ante by offering free boxes of Crayola
Crayola
Crayola is a brand of artists' supplies manufactured by Crayola LLC, which was founded in 1885 as Binney & Smith. It is best known for its crayons...
crayons and coloring books for as long as supplies lasted. Other retailers, like Sears, Aéropostale
Aéropostale (clothing)
Aéropostale, Inc. is a mall-based, specialty retailer of casual apparel and accessories, principally targeting 14-to-17-year-old young women and men through its Aéropostale stores and 7-to-12-year-old kids through its P.S. from Aéropostale stores...
, and Kmart
Kmart
Kmart, sometimes styled as "K-Mart," is a chain of discount department stores. The chain acquired Sears in 2005, forming a new corporation under the name Sears Holdings Corporation. The company was founded in 1962 and is the third largest discount store chain in the world, behind Wal-Mart and...
, began Black Friday sales early Thanksgiving morning, and ran them through as late as 11:00 p.m. Friday evening. Forever 21
Forever 21
Forever 21 is an American chain of clothing retailers with branches in major cities in The United States, Puerto Rico, Canada, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East that offers fashion and accessories for young women and men....
went in the opposite direction, opening at normal hours on Friday, and running late sales until 2:00 a.m. Saturday morning. Historically, it was common for Black Friday sales to extend throughout the following weekend. However, this practice has largely disappeared in recent years, perhaps because of an effort by retailers to create a greater sense of urgency.
The huge population centers around Lake Ontario
Lake Ontario
Lake Ontario is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is bounded on the north and southwest by the Canadian province of Ontario, and on the south by the American state of New York. Ontario, Canada's most populous province, was named for the lake. In the Wyandot language, ontarío means...
in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
have always attracted cross border shopping into the U.S. states, and as Black Friday became more popular in the U.S. after 2001, many were traveling for the deals across the border. In 2009 several major Canadian retailers had their own version of the day by running promotions to discourage shoppers from leaving for the U.S. Canada's Boxing Day is comparable to Black Friday in terms of retailer impact and consumerism, but Black Fridays in the U.S. seem to provide deeper or more extreme price cuts than Canadian retailers, even for the same international retailer.
More recently, Black Friday has been exported to nations outside of North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
such as Australia and the United Kingdom by major online retailers like Amazon or Apple. In 2011, IBM reported online Black Friday sales were up 24.3% according to a study that included 500 retailers.
Origin of the term
Black FridayBlack Friday
Black Friday is a term used to refer to certain events which occur on a Friday. It has been used in the following cases:*Black Friday , imprisonment of the Seven Bishops , on the eve of the Glorious Revolution....
as a term has been used in multiple contexts, going back to the nineteenth century, where it was associated with a financial crisis in 1869
Black Friday (1869)
Black Friday, September 24, 1869 also known as the Fisk/Gould scandal, was a financial panic in the United States caused by two speculators’ efforts to corner the gold market on the New York Gold Exchange. It was one of several scandals that rocked the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant...
in the United States. The earliest known reference to "Black Friday" to refer to the day after Thanksgiving was made in a 1966 publication on the day's significance in Philadelphia:
JANUARY 1966 -- "Black Friday" is the name which the Philadelphia Police Department has given to the Friday following Thanksgiving Day. It is not a term of endearment to them. "Black Friday" officially opens the Christmas shopping season in center cityCenter City, PhiladelphiaCenter City, or Downtown Philadelphia includes the central business district and central neighborhoods of the City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. As of 2005, its population of over 88,000 made it the third most populous downtown in the United States, after New York City's and Chicago's...
, and it usually brings massive traffic jams and over-crowded sidewalks as the downtown stores are mobbed from opening to closing.
The term Black Friday began to get wider exposure around 1975, as shown by two newspaper articles from November 29, 1975, both datelined Philadelphia. The first reference is in an article entitled "Army vs. Navy: A Dimming Splendor," in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
:
Philadelphia police and bus drivers call it "Black Friday" - that day each year between Thanksgiving Day and the Army–Navy Game. It is the busiest shopping and traffic day of the year in the Bicentennial City as the Christmas list is checked off and the Eastern college football season nears conclusion.
The derivation is also clear in an Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
article entitled "Folks on Buying Spree Despite Down Economy," which ran in the Titusville
Titusville, Pennsylvania
Titusville is a city in Crawford County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 6,146 at the 2000 census. In 1859, oil was successfully drilled in Titusville, resulting in the birth of the modern oil industry.-History:...
Herald on the same day:
Store aisles were jammed. Escalators were nonstop people. It was the first day of the Christmas shopping season and despite the economy, folks here went on a buying spree. ... "That's why the bus drivers and cab drivers call today 'Black Friday,'" a sales manager at Gimbels said as she watched a traffic cop trying to control a crowd of jaywalkers. "They think in terms of headaches it gives them."
The term's spread was gradual, however, and in 1985 the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that retailers in Cincinnati and Los Angeles were still unaware of the term.
Accounting practice
Many merchants objected to the use of a negative term to refer to one of the most important shopping days in the year. By the early 1980s, an alternative theory began to be circulated: that retailers traditionally operated at a financial loss for most of the year (January through November) 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). The earliest known use, which like the 1966 example above was found by Bonnie Taylor-Blake of the American Dialect SocietyAmerican Dialect Society
The American Dialect Society, founded in 1889, is a learned society "dedicated to the study of the English language in North America, and of other languages, or dialects of other languages, influencing it or influenced by it." The Society publishes the academic journal, American Speech...
, is from 1981, again from Philadelphia, and presents the "black ink" theory as one of several competing possibilities:
If the day is the year's biggest for retailers, why is it called Black Friday?
Because it is a day retailers make profits -- black ink, said Grace McFeeley of Cherry Hill Mall.
"I think it came from the media," said William Timmons of Strawbridge & Clothier.
"It's the employees, we're the ones who call it Black Friday," said Belle Stephens of Moorestown Mall. "We work extra hard. It's a long hard day for the employees."
The Christmas shopping season is of enormous importance to American retailers and, while most retailers intend to and actually do make profits during every quarter of the year, some retailers are so dependent on the Christmas shopping season that the quarter including Christmas produces all the year's profits and compensates for losses from other quarters.
Violence
In 2006, a man in Roanoke, VirginiaRoanoke, Virginia
Roanoke is an independent city in the Mid-Atlantic U.S. state of Virginia and is the tenth-largest city in the Commonwealth. It is located in the Roanoke Valley of the Roanoke Region of Virginia. The population within the city limits was 97,032 as of 2010...
shopping at Best Buy
Best Buy
Best Buy Co., Inc. is an American specialty retailer of consumer electronics in the United States, accounting for 19% of the market. It also operates in Mexico, Canada & China. The company's subsidiaries include Geek Squad, CinemaNow, Magnolia Audio Video, Pacific Sales, and, in Canada operates...
was recorded on video assaulting another shopper. Unruly Walmart shoppers at a store outside Columbus, Ohio
Columbus, Ohio
Columbus is the capital of and the largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio. The broader metropolitan area encompasses several counties and is the third largest in Ohio behind those of Cleveland and Cincinnati. Columbus is the third largest city in the American Midwest, and the fifteenth largest city...
, quickly flooded in the doors at opening, pinning several employees against stacks of merchandise. Nine shoppers in a California mall were injured, including an elderly woman who had to be taken to the hospital, when the crowd rushed to grab gift certificates that had been released from the ceiling.
In 2008 a crowd of approximately 2,000 shoppers in Valley Stream, New York
Valley Stream, New York
Valley Stream is a village in Nassau County, New York in the United States. The population in the village of Valley Stream was 37,511 at the 2010 census...
, waited outside for the 5:00 a.m. opening of the local Walmart. As opening time approached the crowd grew anxious and when the doors were opened the crowd pushed forward, breaking the door down, and trampling a 34 year old employee to death. The shoppers did not appear concerned with the victim's fate, expressing refusal to halt their stampede when other employees attempted to intervene and help the injured employee, complaining that they had been waiting in the cold and were not willing to wait any longer. Shoppers had begun assembling as early as 9:00 the evening before. Even when police arrived and attempted to render aid to the injured man, shoppers continued to pour in, shoving and pushing the officers as they made their way into the store. Several other people incurred minor injuries, including a pregnant woman who had to be taken to the hospital. The incident may be the first case of a death occurring during Black Friday sales; according to the National Retail Federation
National Retail Federation
The National Retail Federation is the world's largest retail trade association. Its members include department store, specialty, discount, catalog, Internet, and independent retailers, and chain restaurants and grocery stores. Members also include businesses that provide goods and services to...
, "We are not aware of any other circumstances where a retail employee has died working on the day after Thanksgiving."
During Black Friday 2010, a Madison, Wisconsin
Madison, Wisconsin
Madison is the capital of the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Dane County. It is also home to the University of Wisconsin–Madison....
woman was arrested outside of a Toys 'R' Us store after cutting in line, and threatening to shoot other shoppers who tried to object. A Toys for Tots
Toys for Tots
Toys for Tots is a program run by the United States Marine Corps Reserve which donates toys to children whose parents cannot afford to buy them gifts for Christmas. The program was founded in 1947 by reservist Major William L...
volunteer in Georgia was stabbed by a shoplifter. An Indianapolis
Indianapolis
Indianapolis is the capital of the U.S. state of Indiana, and the county seat of Marion County, Indiana. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city's population is 839,489. It is by far Indiana's largest city and, as of the 2010 U.S...
woman was arrested after causing a disturbance by arguing with other Wal-Mart shoppers. She had been asked to leave the store, but refused. A man was arrested at a Florida Wal-Mart on drug and weapons charges after other shoppers waiting in line for the store to open noticed that he was carrying a handgun
Handgun
A handgun is a firearm designed to be held and operated by one hand. This characteristic differentiates handguns as a general class of firearms from long guns such as rifles and shotguns ....
and reported the matter to police. He was discovered to also be carrying two knives and a pepper spray
Pepper spray
Pepper spray, also known as OC spray , OC gas, and capsicum spray, is a lachrymatory agent that is used in riot control, crowd control and personal self-defense, including defense against dogs and bears...
grenade. A man in Buffalo, New York
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...
, was trampled when doors opened at a Target
Target Corporation
Target Corporation, doing business as Target, is an American retailing company headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is the second-largest discount retailer in the United States, behind Walmart. The company is ranked at number 33 on the Fortune 500 and is a component of the Standard & Poor's...
store and unruly shoppers rushed in, in an episode reminiscent of the deadly 2008 Wal-Mart stampede.
On Black Friday 2011, a woman used pepper spray
Pepper spray
Pepper spray, also known as OC spray , OC gas, and capsicum spray, is a lachrymatory agent that is used in riot control, crowd control and personal self-defense, including defense against dogs and bears...
on fellow shoppers, causing minor injuries to at least 10 people who had been waiting hours for Black Friday savings. It was later reported that the incident caused 20 injuries. The incident started as people waited in line for the new Xbox 360
Xbox 360
The Xbox 360 is the second video game console produced by Microsoft and the successor to the Xbox. The Xbox 360 competes with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
. A witness said a woman with two children in tow became upset with the way people were pushing in line. The witness said she pulled out pepper spray and sprayed the other people in line. Another account stated: "The store had brought out a crate of discounted Xbox video game players, and a crowd had formed to wait for the unwrapping, when the woman began spraying people 'in order to get an advantage,' according to the police. In an incident outside a Walmart store in San Leandro, California
San Leandro, California
San Leandro is a city in Alameda County, California, United States. It is considered a suburb of Oakland and San Francisco. The population was 84,950 as of 2010 census. The climate of the city is mild throughout the year.-Geography and water resources:...
, one man was wounded after being shot following Black Friday shopping at about 1:45am.
History
That the day after Thanksgiving is the "official" start of the holiday shopping season may be linked together with the idea of Santa Claus parades. Parades celebrating Thanksgiving often include an appearance by Santa at the end of the parade, with the idea that 'Santa has arrived' or 'Santa is just around the corner'.In the late 19th century and early 20th century, many Santa parades or Thanksgiving Day parades were sponsored by department stores. These include the Toronto Santa Claus Parade
Toronto Santa Claus Parade
The Toronto Santa Claus Parade is a Santa Claus parade held annually in mid-November in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. More than a half million people attend the parade every year. The parade starts at 12:30pm and ends approximately 3:30pm...
, in Canada, sponsored by Eaton's
Eaton's
The T. Eaton Co. Limited was once Canada's largest department store retailer. It was founded in 1869 in Toronto by Timothy Eaton, an Irish immigrant. Eaton's grew to become a retail and social institution in Canada, with stores across the country, buying offices across the globe, and a catalogue...
, and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade
Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade
The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, often shortened to Macy's Day Parade, is an annual parade presented by Macy's. The tradition started in 1924, tying it for the second-oldest Thanksgiving parade in the United States along with America's Thanksgiving Parade in Detroit, and four years younger than...
sponsored by Macy's
Macy's
Macy's is a U.S. chain of mid-to-high range department stores. In addition to its flagship Herald Square location in New York City, the company operates over 800 stores in the United States...
. Department stores would use the parades to launch a big advertising push. Eventually it just became an unwritten rule that no store would try doing Christmas advertising before the parade was over. Therefore, the day after Thanksgiving became the day when the shopping season officially started.
Later on, the fact that this marked the official start of the shopping season led to controversy. In 1939, retail shops would have liked to have a longer shopping season, but no store wanted to break with tradition and be the one to start advertising before Thanksgiving. President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the date for Thanksgiving one week earlier, leading to much anger by the public who wound up having to change holiday plans. Some even refused the change, resulting in the U.S. citizens celebrating Thanksgiving on two separate days. Some started referring to the change as Franksgiving
Franksgiving
Franksgiving is a portmanteau of "Franklin" and "Thanksgiving", coined by Atlantic City mayor Thomas Taggart to describe the American Thanksgiving holiday from 1939–1941....
.
Black Thursday
In recent years, retailers have been trending towards opening on Black Thursday, Thanksgiving evening. In 2011, Walmart, will for the first time launch its holiday sale at 10:00 PM on Black Thursday.Cyber Black Friday
The term Cyber Black FridayCyber Black Friday
Cyber Black Friday is a marketing term for the online version of Black Friday, the Friday following Thanksgiving Day in the United States. The term made its debut in a 2009 press release entitled "Black Friday Goes Online for Cyber Black Friday"...
refers to the online version of Black Friday. According to Hitwise in 2010,
Thanksgiving weekend offered a strong start, especially as Black Friday sales continued to grow in popularity. For the 2nd consecutive year, Black Friday was the highest day for retail traffic during the holiday season, followed by Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday. The highest year-over-year increases in visits took place on Cyber Monday and Black Friday with growth of 16% and 13%, respectively.
Advertising tip sites
Some websites offer information about day-after-Thanksgiving specials up to a month in advance. The text listings of items and prices are usually accompanied by pictures of the actual ad circulars. These are either leaked by insiders or intentionally released by large retailers to give consumers insight and allow them time to plan.In recent years, some retailers (including Walmart, Target
Target Corporation
Target Corporation, doing business as Target, is an American retailing company headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is the second-largest discount retailer in the United States, behind Walmart. The company is ranked at number 33 on the Fortune 500 and is a component of the Standard & Poor's...
, OfficeMax
OfficeMax
OfficeMax , is an American office supplies retailer that was founded in 1988 and is headquartered in Naperville, Illinois.-History:On April 1, 1988, OfficeMax was founded in Cleveland, Ohio, by Bob Hurwitz and Michael Feuer. Hurwitz served as executive chairman and chief executive officer and Feuer...
, Big Lots
Big Lots
Big Lots, Inc. is a Fortune 500 retail corporation with annual revenues well over $4 billion.Its department stores focus mainly on selling closeout and overstock merchandise. The company is based in Columbus, Ohio, USA and currently operates over 1,400 stores in 47 states...
, and Staples
Staples, Inc.
Staples Inc. is a large office supply chain store, with over 2,000 stores worldwide in 26 countries. Based in Framingham, Massachusetts, United States, the company has retail stores, serving customers under its original name in Austria, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Norway,...
) have claimed that the advertisements they send in advance of Black Friday and the prices included in those advertisements are copyrighted and are trade secret
Trade secret
A trade secret is a formula, practice, process, design, instrument, pattern, or compilation of information which is not generally known or reasonably ascertainable, by which a business can obtain an economic advantage over competitors or customers...
s.
Some of these retailers have used the take-down system
Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act
The Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act is United States federal law that creates a conditional safe harbor for online service providers and other Internet intermediaries by shielding them for their own acts of direct copyright infringement as well as...
of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
Digital Millennium Copyright Act
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization . It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures that control access to...
as a means to remove the offending price listings. This policy may come from the fear that competitors will slash prices, and shoppers may comparison shop. The actual validity of the claim that prices form a protected work of authorship is uncertain as the prices themselves (though not the advertisements) might be considered a fact in which case they would not receive the same level of protection as a copyrighted work.
The benefit of threatening Internet sites with a DMCA based lawsuit has proved tenuous at best. While some sites have complied with the requests, others have either ignored the threats or simply continued to post the information under the name of a similar sounding fictional retailer. However, as the DMCA allows websites 24 hours to comply with the take-down notice
Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act
The Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act is United States federal law that creates a conditional safe harbor for online service providers and other Internet intermediaries by shielding them for their own acts of direct copyright infringement as well as...
or file a counter notice, careful timing may mitigate the take-down notice. An Internet service provider
Internet service provider
An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...
in 2003 brought suit against Best Buy
Best Buy
Best Buy Co., Inc. is an American specialty retailer of consumer electronics in the United States, accounting for 19% of the market. It also operates in Mexico, Canada & China. The company's subsidiaries include Geek Squad, CinemaNow, Magnolia Audio Video, Pacific Sales, and, in Canada operates...
, Kohl's
Kohl's
Kohl's Corporation is an American department store chain headquartered in the Milwaukee suburb of Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, operating , 1,089 stores in 49 states. In 1998, it entered the S&P 500 list, and is also listed in the Fortune 500...
, and Target Corporation
Target Corporation
Target Corporation, doing business as Target, is an American retailing company headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is the second-largest discount retailer in the United States, behind Walmart. The company is ranked at number 33 on the Fortune 500 and is a component of the Standard & Poor's...
, arguing that the take-down notice provisions of the DMCA are unconstitutional. The court dismissed the case, ruling that only the third-party posters of the advertisements, and not the ISP itself, would have standing
Standing (law)
In law, standing or locus standi is the term for the ability of a party to demonstrate to the court sufficient connection to and harm from the law or action challenged to support that party's participation in the case...
to sue the retailers.
Usage of Black Friday Advertising Tip sites and buying direct varies by state in the U.S., influenced in large part by differences in shipping costs and whether a state has a sales tax. However, in recent years, the convenience of online shopping has increased the number of cross-border shoppers seeking bargains from outside of the U.S., especially from Canada. Statistics Canada indicates that online cross-border shopping by Canadians has increased by about 300M a year since 2002. The complex nature of additional fees such as taxes, duties and brokerage can make calculating the final cost of cross-border Black Friday deals difficult. Dedicated cross-border shopping solutions such as the Canadian shopping platform Wishabi
Wishabi
Wishabi is a Canadian online shopping platform that is owned and maintained by the Wishabi corporation. Wishabi's mission is "to give Canadians the best tools to make informed shopping decisions"....
and Canada Post’s Borderfree exist to mitigate the problem through estimation of the various cost involved.
Cyber Thanksgiving
The term Cyber Thanksgiving, refers to online retailer's Thanksgiving Day promotions. According to The Record (Bergen County, New Jersey):Thanksgiving Day is becoming increasingly important for online sales, according to e-commerce watchers. It has become the lead-in for five days of online deals experts say are causing some bargain hunters to shop online instead of standing in line at stores.
“Thanksgiving interestingly enough has turned into a really big sales day for us in the last couple of years,” said Greg Ahearn, senior vice president, marketing and e-commerce, for Wayne, New Jersey-based Toys “R” Us. “Everybody’s looking for information about what’s going to happen on Black Friday, but when they hit the Web sites they realize there’s a bunch of great deals there, and free shipping,’’ he said. “And if they get the right deals on the products that they’re looking for, they actually create a purchase on Thanksgiving Day as opposed to waiting for Black Friday.”
Cyber Monday
The term Cyber Monday, a neologism invented in 2005 by the National Retail Federation'sNational Retail Federation
The National Retail Federation is the world's largest retail trade association. Its members include department store, specialty, discount, catalog, Internet, and independent retailers, and chain restaurants and grocery stores. Members also include businesses that provide goods and services to...
division Shop.org, refers to the Monday immediately following Black Friday based on a trend that retailers began to recognize in 2003 and 2004. Retailers noticed that many consumers, who were too busy to shop over the Thanksgiving weekend or did not find what they were looking for, shopped for bargains online that Monday from home or work.
Retail Sales
The National Retail FederationNational Retail Federation
The National Retail Federation is the world's largest retail trade association. Its members include department store, specialty, discount, catalog, Internet, and independent retailers, and chain restaurants and grocery stores. Members also include businesses that provide goods and services to...
releases figures on the sales for each Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving (United States)
Thanksgiving, or Thanksgiving Day, is a holiday celebrated in the United States on the fourth Thursday in November. It has officially been an annual tradition since 1863, when, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving to be celebrated on Thursday,...
weekend.
| Year | Date | Survey Published | Shoppers, millions | Average Spend | Total Spend | Consumers Polled | Margin for Error |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | 24 Nov | 27 Nov | 226m | $398.62 | $52.5 billion | 3,826 | 1.6% |
| 2010 | 25 Nov | 28 Nov | 212m | $365.34 | $45.0 billion | 4,306 | 1.5% |
| 2009 | 26 Nov | 29 Nov | 195m | $343.31 | $41.2 billion | 4,985 | 1.4% |
| 2008 | 27 Nov | 30 Nov | 172m | $372.57 | $41.0 billion | 3,370 | 1.7% |
| 2007 | 22 Nov | 25 Nov | 147m | $347.55 | n/a | 2,395 | 1.5% |
| 2006 | 23 Nov | 26 Nov | 140m | $360.15 | n/a | 3,090 | 1.5% |
| 2005 | 24 Nov | 27 Nov | n/a | $302.81 | n/a | n/a | n/a |