Comments on: For Black Friday, shades of gray
Retailers looking for the annual surge in sales face rough going this year, as the economy crumbles and consumers play hard to get.
Most Popular
15 sites that went kaput in 2009
Web sites launch all the time, but they also shut their doors. We highlight 15 that bit the dust this year.
Top 10 news stories of the decade
Let the debate begin: Was the iPhone more important than iTunes? Was anything bigger than Google finding a great business model? CNET offers its list of the 10 most important stories of the '00s.
About Business Tech
Your destination for the latest news on enterprise-level information technology, from chip research and server design to software issues including programming, open source and patents.
Add this feed to your online news reader
Business Tech topics
Besides, "Day After Thanksgiving Sales" is much more descriptive. I don't go shopping that Friday just because I want the retailers to get some money. I go looking for the sales.
"Black Friday" refers to retailers selling enough goods to make actually money on their balance sheets.
The two ideas are opposite of each other. The sales help get people into a store, but the sale itself is not helping the store make any money. Many times, they loose money on those great bargain items.
This would indicate that the only way retailers can make money is by swindling customers with bait-and-switch tactics.
Furthermore, except for the doorbuster sales a lot of the sales aren't really impressive. Many of the non-doorbuster sales are no more impressive than sales during a regular week it is just that there are more items on sale. A careful consumer could have gotten almost everything on a lot of these post thanksgiving day ads without waiting in a 1-4 hour long line just by watching the weekly ads in the the Sunday newspaper. Even the doorbuster items require a wait that pretty excessive. Especially in warmer climates some people are known to wait 8+ hours for a chance at 8-10 of these doorbusters. If you divide the number of hours by the money saved in some cases the savings per hour of waiting isn't impressive.
at places like Best Buy you have people camping out for 3-4 days to try to save $50 on a laptop, of which each store has maybe 6 in stock. it's really gotten ridiculous
Most retailers are identical to everyone else.
Instead of people lining up to get fleeced, the retailers will just have to work a little for profits.
Hopefully it causes more than one to go belly up, we need a culling of the retail flock.
Due to the lack of really huge loss leaders I doubt many stores will lose money on Black Friday, but I expect customers to be spending less money this year so even the most successful stores may not be significantly more profitable on this day.
dude you're trying too hard to be different. how about you be a normal person and call it what normal people call it -- Black Friday.
as for the sales and deals this year...
Amazon has some really good ones going on. there's a $199 PS3 with Little Big Planet included. you just have to log in and cast your vote and then you're entered into a random drawing to be offered that price.
By the way, people who go shopping at the crack of dawn (or earlier) on the day after Thanksgiving need to find a hobby or something, or maybe they could get up and make a great day-after-Thanksgiving breakfast and enjoy it with their families instead of going shopping. Most of the time when a store has some spectacular deal on a particular item (like a digital camera for $29 or a DVD player for $19), it is a terrible item that isn't even worth the low price people are paying for it. Everyone would be better off saving their money for a while (I know that's next to impossible for many people) and buying a better, more expensive "insert item name here."
I know more than a few people who put themselves into debt every winter because they don't want to come out and say they can't afford to buy a bunch of Christmas presents for everyone, and these supposed black Friday "deals" just encourage people to go out and spend more money that they don't have. I think the real reason the day after Thanksgiving is referred to as "black Friday" is because it is the beginning of a new form of plague...one whose primary symptom is a mountain of credit card debt.
But to those of you brave enough (or dumb enough) to shop on Friday: good luck!
There are some real deals on Black Friday, but I have noticed this year that there are a number of retail stores that are advertising cheap items at or only slightly below MSRP and are relying upon customers to think that they are getting a great deal simply because it is Black Friday and people associate great deals with Black Friday.
No thanks. I pass.
If you want to stay warm, check out this site. It's full of online Black Friday and Cyber Monday Deals:
http://www.blackfridayads.me
It's not the "only" day they make a profit, it's just the first day they become profitable for the whole year.
Google. It's your friend, Friend.
the only problem with this, is that most companies report earnings on a quarterly basis...annual profits don't really amount to a whole hill of beans.
Black Friday is really a bunch of smoke and mirrors, with very few legitimate "deals" and most retailers will be hard pressed to turn a profit by Christmas if they're lucky, since every consumer will spend about $200 less this year. so if they thought last year was mediocre, look out, they ain't seen nothin yet.
not into it at all.
Hopefully we get Manny back
That being said, even though I am not in any way religious, it is sad to see that Christmas is no longer about Jesus' story for many people (even many supposed Christians). Instead it is about making wish-lists, shopping, and greed. Personally, I would be happy just getting to spend time with family and have a nice dinner. I could really go without the gift exchanging, especially amongst adults.
- by Hockeyfan333 November 26, 2008 5:32 AM PST
- Black Friday - The day I wear black and morn my bank account while my wife goes shopping. :)
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
-
- by bsharkey November 28, 2008 5:45 AM PST
- LOL very true hockey fan!!
- Like this
-
Showing 1 of 2 pages (35 Comments)