Black Friday has become an enormous "tent pole event" for both retailers and consumers. The day after Thanksgiving has become synonymous with outrageous deals – but also outrageous lines, all-night camp outs, poorly-staffed stores, and sometimes violent confrontations between shoppers vying to be the first to hit the shelves.
For a long time, Black Friday was seen as simply a good day to get a head start on Christmas shopping and save some money. However, in recent years, store openings have crept earlier and earlier, even into Thanksgiving itself, and viral videos of stampeding shoppers, brawls, and even some deaths have contributed to a growing sense that the infamous “holiday” has gone too far. Add to this the numerous complaints from employees on social media and the rise in popularly of online/mobile shopping, and one gets the sense that the importance of Black Friday is finally waning.
As demonstrated by REI for the fourth consecutive year, retailers who take the brave stance of sticking to normal business hours, can not only engender goodwill from their employees by adhering to tenets of their corporate culture, but also, in certain situations, can endear themselves to loyal customers - a true win / win if ever there was one. This year, not only will REI close their physical locations during Thanksgiving and Black Friday, but they also plan to take it a step further by not processing online orders during this time either. Though REI is one retailer willing to push the limits by completely closing up shop on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, countless other retailers have curtailed the practice of opening their doors Thanksgiving evening. In fact, according to BestBlackFriday.com, a record number of stores will remain closed that day.
The Origins of Black Friday
While the term "Black Friday" wasn’t coined until the 1960s, the day after Thanksgiving has been known as the official start of the Christmas shopping season since Macy’s established its Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1924. The term "Black Friday" is associated with by-hand accounting practices, where red ink was used to indicate a loss and black ink to indicate a profit: holiday shopping moves retailers from the red to the black. But "Black Friday" was popularized with a distinctly negative connotation in the minds of many. Police in the 1960s in Philadelphia griped about how congested the streets became on this day, labeling it "Black Friday" and contributing to the sense of the day’s chaotic consumerist frenzy.
Growing Crowds, Earlier Hours
Most retailers see Black Friday as an opportunity to draw large crowds and capitalize on "first mover advantage" by capturing customers before the competition. Retailers typically advertise aggressive mark-downs on so called "door-busters". Many times these door-busters are nothing more than poorly stocked loss-leaders intended to drive traffic through scarcity while (hopefully) increasing total "basket size" with other, more profitable items.
In today's 24-hour news cycle, Black Friday commands intense media coverage akin to traffic warnings on the days leading up to Thanksgiving. Retailers have become adept at taking advantage of this by offering the lowest price on a popular item or two, thereby magnifying their "share of voice" through what the industry calls "earned media".
To compete with each other, big retailers began opening earlier and earlier on Friday morning. In 2007, the average store opening was around 5am on Black Friday. By 2014, the average store opening was pulled ahead nearly 11 hours, to 6pm on Thanksgiving Day, with many referring to this shift as "Gray Thursday".
In the scramble to be seen as the Black Friday shopping destination, stores like Wal-Mart, Toys "R" Us, Best Buy and many other big box retailers called their employees away from their holiday feasts and family gatherings to "man the store" for even earlier, crazier openings.
In 2011, a Target employee started a Change.org petition asking the store to remain closed on Thanksgiving day – and gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures. Many similar ones followed the next year. While the retail giant argued that some employees had volunteered to pick up the extra hours at the holiday time-and-a-half pay rate, the public was becoming increasingly aware of who the real victims were in the buying frenzy. It wasn’t the crowds who camped out, sweated, and shoved to get the last remaining DVD player at 80 percent off – it was the employees who had to sacrifice time with their families to go to work in the middle of the fray.
The Fall of Black Friday?
In recent years, both retailers and consumers have witnessed a backlash against encroaching Black Friday hours. For one, retailers are forced to offer unprofitable deals and pay employees for all those extra hours in order to compete with the box store next door. Furthermore, many retail experts aren't convinced that opening on Thursday doesn't simply cannibalize sales that could have been made on Friday. Beyond that, it seems most shoppers besides the diehard deal hunters are simply tired of the crowds and frenzied consumerism associated with Black Friday, and are opting to shop online. According to RetailDive, last year's shopping holiday generated a record $5 billion from online sales on Black Friday, representing a 17 percent increase from 2016's $4.3 billion.
This is to say nothing of course, to the damage done to employee moral when companies so transparently put profits ahead of sacrosanct family time on one of the most cherished family holidays. As the busiest travel day, many families look forward to hitting the road during Thanksgiving as an opportunity to spend time with their loved ones. For others, this is a time when families look to take advantage of the "long weekend" to plan activities such as tree trimming and decorating for the next big holiday, or simply using the time as a well deserved staycation.
With the rise of online sales, more and more businesses find it unnecessary to open their doors on Thanksgiving and as such, many well known national and regional retailers will be closed. While a primary motivation to open so early may be profit, retailers like REI are recognizing that giving their employees a real holiday gets them a lot of good press. And in an age where no shady corporate practice stays hidden for long, even the biggest retailers need some positive press, especially if they hope to stand out from the crowd and appeal to the Millennial mindset.
The rise and fall of Black Friday has been several decades in the making, with employees continuing to be a large driving force in the cultural shift. Each year the list of companies electing to close their doors during Thanksgiving grows, a positive sign that employers, while profit conscious, still value family first.
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