With the holiday season in full swing, many stores and retailers are offering seasonal sales, most notably those for Black Friday.
Black Friday sales began in the 1980s due to the large number of shoppers on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Since then, it has become a yearly tradition, with some of the biggest sales of the year taking place.
Historically, Black Friday has been a very hectic shopping day, with customers crowding stores searching for the best deals. The rise of the Internet, however, has significantly altered the shopping experience, as many of the deals are found online during Cyber Monday. Shopping for Black Friday deals now lasts longer, rather than being concentrated on a single day.
Abigail Pomery (11) says, “The day has had a major shift following the increase of online shopping, as before it was an excuse for a fun outing with my family, but now only a few go because it’s easier to buy things online.”
The National Retail Foundation estimates that over 200 million consumers shopped between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday this year, keeping in line with the popularity of this commercial tradition. However, the longer range is indicative of the changing nature of Black Friday shopping, with some people noting a decline in the offers.
“The deals aren’t as good as they were a few years ago,” says Sabrina Corral-Rzepka (11), “but for some things, [like] the more expensive things, they’re usually worth it.”
While Black Friday is a decades-old staple of holiday shopping, its excessively consumerist nature tends to leave some people dissatisfied.
“Most of the deals [are] pretty minimal in my opinion,” says Pomery. “I think it in the past was a good excuse to go on social outings and relieve [the] stress of Thanksgiving through ‘retail therapy,’ but [it] has just evolved into harming minimum wage employees and corporations deceiving people.”
Concerns about the overly consumerist nature of Black Friday are common. The retail phenomenon takes advantage of the very human fears of scarcity and being left out, prompting people to buy things more frantically. Despite this, the sales are still a way for goods to be more accessible to people.
Corral-Rzepka says, “The sales are pretty decent. My mom and I usually go out shopping and buy stuff that we need or wanted but [had] waited for them to go on sale.”
Students are also noticing that every year, Black Friday seems to extend, with sales appearing earlier and lasting longer. For some, this makes it difficult to tell if discounts are worthwhile or simply marketing tactics. Also, the sales are overshadowed by the frenzy of the holiday season.
Pomery notes, “I think that the deals aren’t usually worth it and are a way to encourage consumerism, especially considering they want to increase it for [the] Christmas season.”
Still, Black Friday can help shoppers on a budget, especially for costlier essentials. Overall, a number of opinions surround the sale day, but most agree that being informed and intentional about purchasing can help make it a practical and beneficial addition to the holiday season.
