Black Friday Meaning

What is the meaning of Black Friday? Is it the day after thanksgiving when the slave owners began to sell slaves at a discounted price? Or is it a term from the Philadelphia police department indicating the mayhem of traffic jams and vehicle collision due to the two day sale in the retail markets? The term “Black Friday” is the indication for the day in which retail stores move from red to black; an accounting expression which refers red as the losses in sales and black as the gains in sales. Ever since Black Friday began in 1924 after the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, it has gone into various fluctuations. In 2005, the National Retail Market introduced the first Cyber Monday promotion. This helped potential customers who were on their Thanksgiving

In fact, many might not know that the super sales event might bring catastrophe and upset employees. For an example, Wal-Mart, one of the most successful discount retailers, has promised to open their doors on Thanksgiving night in order to gain stronger sales and profit. This ultimately might make the customers happy, however, on the other hand it will upset the employees. By having the doors open on Thanksgiving, it separates the employees from spending time with their families. Creating unhappy staff members can cause them to begin criticizing and exaggerating the situation they are going through, which potentially could hurt the retailers brand image. Then why do retailers open on thanksgiving? Well the main reason is to gain the comparative advantage against retailers who don’t open on Thanksgiving. This helps retailers attract bargain shoppers, and to steal their competitor’s potential customers. However, Wal-Mart has notice the probable damage that their employees can generate, thus they establish an alternative approach to Black Friday. They introduce the “10 holiday deals a day” starting at the beginning of November. By using this tactic they can avoid creating chaos from large herds of customers barging in through the store, in which may hurt the company’s image. Having a negative

It was a massive hit, no one believed that a specialty product, such as an LG television, would be on sale under $200. Nevertheless, Fry’s was not first supermarket or retailer to add specialty products to the Black Friday deal list, even though they were the first to add IPhone 4s to the list back in 2010. In 2008 Saks Fifth Avenue and Tiffany & Co. were the first department stores to enter their specialty products in the Black Friday deals. This was the first time that specialty products was seen in the sales list.

Ultimately, Black Friday brings good business sense to retailors’ that participate in it. In order to keep this going, they must continue innovating. Such as when BestBuy selected Amazon customers as their target market. In order to gain sales, BestBuy updated their price-matching policy in 2012 in order to compete with Amazon, who was dominating the market at the time. Whether a retailer has Black Friday deals on Thanksgiving, 3 weeks earlier, or in couple hours such as Amazon lighting deals, there will be another retailor with a superior market