Black Friday is gradually losing its luster due to fierce e-commerce promotions

Black Friday has always been considered the biggest shopping day of the year and marks the beginning of the annual holiday shopping season. This "tradition" has continued for nearly 50 years, but this year it has been overshadowed by fierce competition and online promotions.

As various promotions pop up like mushrooms after rain, Black Friday has lost its uniqueness. The Friday after Thanksgiving is no longer the only day when consumers can buy their favorite products at the lowest prices of the year.

“This is the end of traditional American shopping,” said Burt P. Flickinger III, managing director of SRG Insight, a retail consulting firm in New York City.

He said retailers had created more and more "shopping days" with special sales every day and that Black Friday had become a victim of "Darwinian Destruction".

In states that allowed retailers to open on the holiday, consumers began shopping frantically on Black Thursday, Thanksgiving Day.

At the same time, the emergence of "Super Saturday" is likely to replace Black Friday as the shopping day with the highest sales of the year. Super Saturday refers to the last Saturday before Christmas. At the same time, retailers are also using online marketing activities as much as possible during the shopping season to increase sales.

As one Walmart executive recently joked, the new Black Friday should be called "November."

Because Massachusetts prohibits retailers from opening on holidays such as Thanksgiving, Black Friday has barely maintained its status, and many consumers will line up in advance, waiting to go on a shopping spree after midnight.

But before they flocked to the malls, many consumers had already started buying gifts at Target or Staples, which began its holiday promotions on Nov. 10 and Staples a week later.

Walmart got in earlier than other retailers, launching its holiday promotions starting November 1.

In most states outside of Massachusetts, many retailers remained open on Thanksgiving evening or offered online sales that morning, with some retailers even running sales on Wednesday.

“The retail community is impatient and trying to get ahead of everyone else,” said Madison Riley, managing partner and retail analyst at Kurt Salmon in New York. “They’re not really sure how the season is going to unfold, so they’re moving promotions forward and back.”

The history of Black Friday can be traced back to the 1960s. It seems that it was originally used by the Philadelphia police to describe the scene of a large number of consumers flocking to major shopping malls on the day after Thanksgiving. Later, retailers took this name and gave it a new meaning, indicating that this was the day when their performance turned losses into profits.

For decades, retailers have offered discounts on the Friday after Thanksgiving to kick off the busy shopping season, a tradition that has kept up with retailers, which typically accounts for 20% of their annual sales.

However, vicious competition soon emerged as each retailer wanted to outdo its competitors and offered higher and higher discounts, such as buying a DVD for $1.99 or selling a Sony PSP game console at 50% off.

In recent years, Black Friday has begun to lose its specialness. In 2013, the total sales of Black Friday were 14% lower than two years ago. But some analysts have asked: Can retailers solve the problem of declining sales by shifting Black Friday promotions to other days, such as Thanksgiving?

"It's more expense, you might have to pay more to have people working over the holidays," Riley said.

On the other hand, allowing consumers to spend more time shopping over a longer shopping trip may lead to more impulse purchases, thereby increasing retailers' total sales.

"You're going to spend more time out shopping," said Michael Tesler, a professor of retailing at Bentley University. "Retailers want to do better this year than they did last year, and if they can't offer better merchandise or lower prices, then they need to run promotions longer."

The National Retail Federation expects retail industry sales in November and December this year to reach $616.9 billion, a year-on-year increase of 4.1%.

Target's promotion earlier this month included one day of sales that slashed $50 off the popular Beats Studio headphones. Target also offered special sales in its mobile shopping app during Thanksgiving week and in-store sales on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

On Black Friday, Target offered just one promotion: 10% off purchases with gift cards.

Walmart used the Thanksgiving weekend to launch its own promotion, which began Thursday morning and lasted until Cyber ​​Monday. Its biggest discount in many stores outside of Massachusetts was a $199 iPad Mini plus a free $30 gift card on Thanksgiving Day.

Black Friday sales are mainly on less popular items, such as tires and jewelry.

Staples also started early, with some business-focused deals on Sunday, including $100 off mesh office chairs. The biggest discounts will traditionally be on Thanksgiving Day, including an Asus laptop for $99.99 and a free Kindle with any laptop priced at $399 or more.

"This gives customers more opportunities to shop whenever and wherever they want, rather than rushing to buy on a single day," said Alison Corcoran, Staples' senior vice president of North American store and online marketing. "We want customers to be able to plan their time flexibly so they can shop at their leisure."

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.