New York City is gearing up for the holiday shopping season with the highly anticipated Black Friday, which marks the start of the post-Thanksgiving retail rush. This year, the event may not create the same midnight mall crowds or doorbuster mayhem as in previous years, due to the increasing popularity of online shopping and the habits formed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Retailers have been bombarding customers with ads and early offers in hopes of enticing them to make purchases. Despite the ease of online shopping, millions of Americans are still expected to participate in Black Friday, either by visiting stores or clicking on countless emails promising huge savings.
According to the National Retail Federation and consumer research firm Prosper Insights & Analytics, an estimated 183.4 million people will shop in U.S. stores and online between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, with 131.7 million of them shopping on Black Friday itself.
However, the landscape of holiday spending has been changing due to the earlier and earlier Black Friday-like promotions, as well as the growing strength of other shopping events such as Cyber Monday. Let’s take a closer look at the history of Black Friday and how it has evolved over the years.
When is Black Friday in 2024?
Black Friday falls on the Friday after Thanksgiving each year, which will be November 29 in 2024.
How old is Black Friday? Where does its name come from?
The term “Black Friday” has been around for several generations, but it was not always associated with the holiday retail frenzy that we know today. In fact, the phrase was first used in relation to the gold market crash of September 1869.
The use of “Black Friday” in relation to shopping the day after Thanksgiving can be traced back to Philadelphia in the mid-20th century. It was a day when police and other city workers had to deal with large crowds that gathered before the annual Army-Navy football game and to take advantage of seasonal sales.
Earlier references to Black Friday date back to the 1950s and 1960s. According to Jie Zhang, a professor of marketing at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, a New York-based trade publication mentioned “Black Friday” in 1951, noting that many workers called in sick on that day in hopes of having a long holiday weekend.
In the 1980s, national retailers began claiming that Black Friday represented the day when they went from operating in the red to in the black, thanks to the surge in holiday demand. However, with the rise of online shopping and the fact that many retail companies now operate in the black at various times of the year, this interpretation should be taken with a grain of salt.
How has Black Friday evolved?
In recent decades, Black Friday became infamous for the massive crowds and long lines at stores. Shoppers would camp out at midnight in hopes of scoring deep discounts. However, with the rise of online shopping, it is now possible to make most, if not all, holiday purchases without ever stepping foot inside a store.
While foot traffic at malls and other shopping areas has bounced back since the start of the pandemic, e-commerce is here to stay. In 2003, e-commerce accounted for only 1.7% of total retail sales in the fourth quarter, according to Commerce Department data. However, in 2020, it accounted for about 17.1% of all nonadjusted retail sales in the fourth quarter, showing a significant increase in online shopping.
Moreover, some big-ticket items that used to attract shoppers to stores on Black Friday, such as TVs, are now significantly cheaper than they were decades ago. This has led to a decrease in the need for shoppers to stand in line at midnight for doorbuster sales.
While many people will do most of their Black Friday shopping online, projections from the National Retail Federation and Prosper Insights indicate that the majority of Black Friday shoppers (65%) still plan to shop in stores this year.
Black Friday ‘month’ and the rise of Cyber Monday
It is no secret that Black Friday sales now last much longer than just 24 hours. Retailers start bombarding customers with holiday deals as early as Halloween. This has led to the creation of what is now known as “Black Friday month.”
According to Zhang, Black Friday is no longer the start of the holiday shopping season, but rather the crescendo of it. This is due to the fact that retailers are trying to get
