Black Friday

[KCALB SIRAY]

Originally Posted by PetersRedYaris

I do it all the time, the tough part is not negating the "free" days by excessive spending inbetween them. Oh well, even the free days aren't really free. Everything costs money, even water... But I have doing great with not buying material things and selling or donating the things I don't use, it's quite liberating.

So is going to the bathroom. I see your point

[Nigal]

Saving the world one book mark at a time.

[bdc87]

Originally Posted by TinyGiant

i'll be working :(


but its at a pet store.. we dont have black friday deals.. we just get 1 million tire kickers who come in and make a mess

+1 I also work at a Pet Store and no Black Friday just mess makers.

[BailOut]

Originally Posted by Nigal

Awe come on bailout! Let's not get too preachy here. I bet he'd burn less fuel shopping than you did last summer in the mountains finding all those mountain lakes.

Every one of those lakes that I found were along my normal commute route. On our way to work we would park in pullouts and mountain bike from there.

The one exception was our trip to Hole in the Ground which did indeed require a 140 mile round trip. However, I had one carpooler on the way there, two carpoolers on the way back, we saw a friend and ran two errands in a remote town nearby, we ate sack lunches and mountain biked roughly 17 miles with over 2,200 feet of elevation changes. In other words I averaged somewhere around 85 pMPG, got a hell of a workout, combined several errands and spent some quality time with friends.

That is hardly comparable to Christmas shopping, whether done online or in the manic traffic.

[Nigal]

Well slap my ass and call me "Nancy" I was wrong about you. You are blameless and unblemished and really do deserve to educate others on their personal lifestyles.

Carry on. :)

[Bob_VT]

Originally Posted by Nigal

Well slap my ass and call me "Nancy" I was wrong about you. You are blameless and unblemished and really do deserve to educate others on their personal lifestyles.

Carry on. :)

[SailDesign]

Originally Posted by Nigal

Well slap my ass and call me "Nancy"

We've been calling you "Nancy" anyway for a while. Nothing much to change

[Nigal]

Originally Posted by SailDesign

We've been calling you "Nancy" anyway for a while. Nothing much to change

LOL! Well let the ass slappin' commence then!

[Bob_VT]

Just a note for the gas saving internet shoppers....... be careful for counterfeit products. If it is a high ticket item be sure to get it from an authorized dealer and in person is best.

[GeneW]

Only reason to go out on "black friday" is in case I meet someone interesting while she's trying to buy stuff. Shared suffering is a great way to build rapport.

Most of the time I hang back and buy later on. Figure with the credit non-sense and layoffs that retailers will be scared and decide to cut prices after Black Friday.

Another definition of "Black Friday" is a day in October when stocks tend be liquidated for their profits. Usually the prices plunge. I half expected one this year but it didn't happen, probably because of the "Plunge Protection Team", an informal US agency that has been playing games on Wall Street (and set the precedent for US bank bailouts).

Gene

[GeneW]

Originally Posted by Bob_VT

Just a note for the gas saving internet shoppers....... be careful for counterfeit products. If it is a high ticket item be sure to get it from an authorized dealer and in person is best.

...especially automobile parts. You all need to buy a counterfeit front end part like you need a hole in the head. Literally.

Gene

[KCALB SIRAY]

[*MAD DOG*]

Originally Posted by Bob_VT

I mentioned this in another post and our Aussie friends were not aware of Black Friday.

Here is a good explanation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_(shopping)

My wife attacks Black Friday by mapping her route and making a schedule! I stay home.

Your wiki link says "This page has been deleted. The deletion log for the page is provided below for reference." Reason for deletion "nonsense"

[Bob_VT]

HA it was hacked!!!

Here it is C&P

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Black Friday
Observed by United States
Date Friday after Thanksgiving
2008 date November 28
2009 date November 27
Celebrations Shopping
Related to Thanksgiving and Christmas
Black Friday is the Friday after Thanksgiving in the United States, where it is the beginning of the traditional Christmas shopping season. Since Thanksgiving falls on the fourth Thursday in November in the United States, Black Friday may be as early as the 23rd and as late as the 29th of November.

Black Friday is not an official holiday, but many employees take the day off, which increases the number of potential shoppers. Retailers often decorate for the Christmas season weeks beforehand. Many retailers open very early (typically 5 am or even earlier) and offer doorbuster deals and loss leaders to draw people to their stores. Although Black Friday, as the first shopping day after Thanksgiving, has served as the unofficial beginning of the Christmas season at least since the start of the modern Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1924, the term "Black Friday" has been traced back only to the 1960s.

The term "Black Friday" originated in Philadelphia in reference to the heavy traffic on that day. More recently, merchants and the media have used it instead to refer to the beginning of the period in which retailers are in the black (i.e., turning a profit).

The news media frequently refer to Black Friday as the busiest retail shopping day of the year, but this is not always accurate. While it has been one of the busiest days in terms of customer traffic,[1][2] in terms of actual sales volume, from 1993 through 2001 Black Friday was usually the fifth to tenth busiest day.[3] In 2002 and 2004, however, Black Friday ranked second place,[4] and in 2003 and 2005, Black Friday actually did reach first place.[5] The busiest retail shopping day of the year in the United States (in terms of both sales and customer traffic) usually has been the Saturday before Christmas.[6]

In many cities it is not uncommon to see shoppers lined up hours before stores with big sales open. Once inside, the stores shoppers often rush and grab, as many stores have only a few of the big draw items. Electronics and popular toys are often the most sought-after items and may be sharply discounted. Because of the shoulder-to-shoulder crowds, many choose to stay home and avoid the hectic shopping experience. The local media often will cover the event, mentioning how early the shoppers began lining up at various stores and providing video of the shoppers standing in line and later leaving with their purchased items. Traditionally Black Friday sales were intended for those shopping for Christmas gifts. For some particularly popular items, some people shop at these sales in order to get deep discounts on items they can then resell, typically online.

Contents [hide]
1 Origin of the name "Black Friday"
1.1 Accounting practice
2 History
3 Black Friday on the Internet
3.1 Advertising tip sites
3.2 Cyber Monday
4 Other Countries
5 References



Origin of the name "Black Friday"
The earliest uses of "Black Friday" come from or reference Philadelphia and refer to the heavy traffic on that day, an implicit comparison to the extremely stressful and chaotic experience of Black Tuesday (the 1929 stock-market crash). The earliest known reference to "Black Friday" (in this sense), found by Bonnie Taylor-Blake of the American Dialect Society, refers to Black Friday 1965 and makes the Philadelphia origin explicit:

JANUARY 1966 -- "Black Friday" is the name which the Philadelphia Police Department has given to the Friday following Thanksgiving Day. It is not a term of endearment to them. "Black Friday" officially opens the Christmas shopping season in center city, and it usually brings massive traffic jams and over-crowded sidewalks as the downtown stores are mobbed from opening to closing.[7]

The term Black Friday began to get wider exposure around 1975, as shown by two newspaper articles from November 29, 1975, both datelined Philadelphia. The first reference is in an article entitled "Army vs. Navy: A Dimming Splendor," in The New York Times:

Philadelphia police and bus drivers call it "Black Friday" - that day each year between Thanksgiving Day and the Army-Navy game. It is the busiest shopping and traffic day of the year in the Bicentennial City as the Christmas list is checked off and the Eastern college football season nears conclusion.

The derivation is also clear in an Associated Press article entitled "Folks on Buying Spree Despite Down Economy," which ran in the Titusville Herald on the same day:

Store aisles were jammed. Escalators were nonstop people. It was the first day of the Christmas shopping season and despite the economy, folks here went on a buying spree. ... "That's why the bus drivers and cab drivers call today 'Black Friday,'" a sales manager at Gimbels said as she watched a traffic cop trying to control a crowd of jaywalkers. "They think in terms of headaches it gives them."


Accounting practice
Look up in the red, in the black in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.Many merchants objected to the use of a negative term to refer to one of the most important shopping days in the year.[8] By the early 1980s, an alternative theory began to be circulated: that retailers traditionally operated at a financial loss for most of the year (January through November) and made their profit during the holiday season, beginning on the day after Thanksgiving. When this would be recorded in the financial records, once-common accounting practices would use red ink to show negative amounts and black ink to show positive amounts. Black Friday, under this theory, is the beginning of the period where retailers would no longer have losses (the red) and instead take in the year's profits (the black). The earliest known use, again found by Bonnie Taylor-Blake, is from 1981, again from Philadelphia, and presents the "black ink" theory as one of several competing possibilities:

If the day is the year's biggest for retailers, why is it called Black Friday? Because it is a day retailers make profits -- black ink, said Grace McFeeley of Cherry Hill Mall. "I think it came from the media," said William Timmons of Strawbridge & Clothier. "It's the employees, we're the ones who call it Black Friday," said Belle Stephens of Moorestown Mall. "We work extra hard. It's a long hard day for the employees."[9]

The Christmas shopping season is of enormous importance to American retailers and, while an examination of the quarterly SEC filings of major retailers such as Wal-Mart or Target shows that most retailers intend to and actually do make profits during every quarter of the year, some retailers are so dependent on the Christmas shopping season that the quarter including Christmas is the only profitable one.[10]


History
This section does not cite any references or sources.
Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (March 2008)

The history of the day after Thanksgiving being the official start of the holiday shopping season is linked together strongly with the idea of Santa Claus parades. They are merged with a parade celebrating Thanksgiving. These parades, though mainly a celebration of thanksgiving, include an appearance by Santa at the end with the idea that 'Santa has arrived' or 'Santa is just around the corner'.

In the late 19th century and early 20th century, many Santa parades / Thanksgiving day parades were sponsored by department stores. These include the Toronto Santa Claus Parade sponsored by Eaton's and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade sponsored by Macy's. Department stores would use the parades to launch a big advertising push. Eventually it just became an unwritten rule that no store would try doing Christmas advertising before the parade was over. Therefore, the day after Thanksgiving became the day when the shopping season officially started.

Later on, the fact that this marked the official start of the shopping season led to controversy. In 1939, America was suffering through the great depression. Retail shops would have liked to have a longer shopping season, but no store wanted to break with tradition and be the one to start advertising before Thanksgiving. President Roosevelt moved the date for Thanksgiving up a week leading to much anger by the public who wound up having to change holiday plans. Folks started referring to the change as Franksgiving.


Black Friday on the Internet

Advertising tip sites
Some websites offer information about Black Friday specials up to a month in advance. The text listings of items and prices are usually accompanied by pictures of the actual ad circulars. These are either leaked by insiders or intentionally released by large retailers to give consumers insight and allow them time to plan.

In recent years, some retailers (including Wal-Mart, Target Corporation, OfficeMax, Big Lots, and Staples, Inc.) have claimed that the advertisements they send in advance of Black Friday and the prices included in those advertisements are copyrighted.[11]

Some of these retailers have used the take-down system of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act as a means to remove the offending price listings. Some believe this policy is derived from a fear that competitors will slash prices, and shoppers may comparison shop. The actual validity of the claim that prices form a protected work of authorship is uncertain as the prices themselves (though not the advertisements) might be considered a fact in which case they would not receive the same level of protection as a copyrighted work.[12]

The benefit of threatening Internet sites with a DMCA based lawsuit has proved tenuous at best. While some sites have complied with the requests, others have either ignored the threats or simply continued to post the information under the name of a similar sounding fictional retailer. However, as the DMCA allows websites 24 hours to comply with the take-down notice or file a counter notice, careful timing may mitigate the take-down notice. An Internet service provider in 2003 brought suit against Best Buy, Kohl's, and Target, arguing that the take-down notice provisions of the DMCA are unconstitutional. The court dismissed the case, ruling that only the third-party posters of the advertisements, and not the ISP itself, would have standing to sue the retailers.[13]


Cyber Monday
Main article: Cyber Monday
The term Cyber Monday, a neologism invented by the National Retail Federation's Shop.org division, refers to the Monday immediately following Black Friday, which unofficially marks the beginning of the Christmas online shopping season.

In recent years, Cyber Monday has become a busy day for online retailers, with some sites offering low prices and other promotions on that day. Like Black Friday, Cyber Monday is often wrongly said to be the busiest shopping day of the year for online shoppers, although in reality several days later in the holiday shopping season are busier.

Earlier in the 2000s the day had more significance (though it was not named as such until 2005) as most people did not have broadband connections at home and presumably used the first day back at work from the long Thanksgiving weekend to take advantage of such connections in the office to do online shopping. In response, many retailers now encourage people to do their online shopping at home on Thanksgiving Day itself by offering their Black Friday sales online that day.


Other Countries
Some Commonwealth of Nations countries have similar days to Black Friday. It is referred to as Boxing Day and held after Christmas Day. A few of those nations also have a Boxing Week-long sale, as held within Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.


References
^ ShopperTrak (2006-10-04). "ShopperTrak Predicts Top 10 Shopping Days of Holiday 2006". Press Release.
^ International Council of Shopping Centers. "Top Ten Holiday Shopping Days 2004" (PDF).
^ Purdue University News Service (2000-11-22). "Christmas Shopping Facts and Figures", Press Release.
^ International Council of Shopping Centers. "Holiday Watch: Media Guide 2006 Holiday Facts and Figure" (PDF).
^ International Council of Shopping Centers. "Holiday Watch: Media Guide 2006 Holiday Facts and Figure" (PDF).
^ Barbara and David P. Mikkelson (2006-11-20). "Black Friday". Urban Legends Reference Pages.
^ Martin L. Apfelbaum, Philadelphia's "Black Friday," American Philatelist, vol. 69, no. 4, p. 239 (Jan. 1966).
^ Jennifer Lin, Why the Name Black Friday? Uh . . . Well . . ., Philadelphia Inquirer (Nov. 30, 1985).
^ Shoppers Flood Stores for "Black Friday," Philadelphia Inquirer (Nov. 28, 1981).
^ E.g., Toys "R" Us, Inc., Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended Feb. 2, 2008, p. 91.
^ "Sale fight no fright for area Web site," Charleston Gazette & Daily Mail (Nov. 26, 2002).
^ Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991).
^ Fatwallet, Inc. v. Best Buy Enterprises Services, 2004 WL 793548 (N.D.Ill. 2004).

[*MAD DOG*]

Thats some reading there bob. Is black friday always the first friday after thanksgiving? and what day is thanksgiving on? We dont celebrate thanksgiving here in Australia, Christmas is the time all the family gets together.

[Greenthunder]

I only go to one place during Black Friday and that is my local Walmart, $5 DVDs FTW!

[Bob_VT]

Originally Posted by *MAD DOG*

Thats some reading there bob. Is black friday always the first friday after thanksgiving? and what day is thanksgiving on? We dont celebrate thanksgiving here in Australia, Christmas is the time all the family gets together.

Yes. Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday is the first Monday.

Thanksgiving is normally the 3d or 4th Thursday (I didn't make that rule) of November in the USA and it differ's in Canada.

Just a great excuse for turkey and football!

[PreciousPups4U]

Originally Posted by Bob_VT

Just a great excuse for turkey and football!

and ham with brown sugar and pineapple glaze, dressing (stuffing), rice, gravy, macaroni and cheese, corn, green beans, sweet potato casserole, broccolli casserole, hashbrown casserole, rolls, pumpkin cheesecake, coconut cake, cranberry orange relish, chocolate delight (mmmm) and probably lots more stuff. Now I am stuffed.