Black Friday and Cyber Monday
There is something very appealing about the hunt for a bargain. In the dark days before the World Wide Web, families would make an annual post-Christmas pilgrimage into the city for the January Sales. There, they would join the crowds enthusiastically rummaging through the bargain racks in search of the seasonal discounts. Then, at the end of a long day, they would trudge home, exhausted but happy, with their spoils of victory.
Today, of course, bargains can be found online without ever leaving the comfort of home. And as the world of retail has become easier to access, established overseas shopping traditions have now become our traditions too. Of these, perhaps the most popular is Black Friday, the name given to the day immediately after the Thanksgiving holiday in the USA, which has become the unofficial launchpad for the Christmas shopping season. A Black Friday sale means big discounts, exclusive releases, and a ticking clock counting down the seconds to the end of the sale. If you want to grab a bargain, you have to be quick!
The history of Black Friday is a fascinating one. The name was first coined in 1869 to describe a catastrophic stock market crash involving a commodity of great interest to many coin collectors – gold. When two unscrupulous financiers, Jay Gould and James Fisk, attempted to corner the gold market on 24th September that year, they sent prices skyrocketing and then crashing, leaving many investors ruined. The financial devastation caused by the crisis was felt by hard-working families all over the country, and the economic impact was felt for months.
Nearly a century later, the phrase was used again - this time by exhausted police officers to describe post-Thanksgiving traffic chaos in Philadelphia when crowds flocked to the city to watch the hugely popular Army-Navy Game of American football. Retailers noticed that, despite the gridlock and queues, their cash registers kept ringing throughout the day. The day after Thanksgiving became one of their most profitable days of the year, the moment when businesses moved out of the ‘red’ (loss) and into the ‘black’ (profit) in their accounting ledgers.
By the 1980s, Black Friday’s reputation had been transformed from economic gloom into a celebration of retail therapy. Seizing the potential of the extra footfall, many stores began offering special one-day-only bargains to shoppers, and as a result of this marketing makeover, the term, which had originally been used to describe disaster, was associated with discounts instead. Black Friday is now a global shopping event, offering limited-time-only discounts, special offers and exclusive merchandise - making it irresistible to bargain hunters everywhere.
As the twenty-first century dawned, online retailers wanted a dedicated day to push internet-exclusive deals. As a result, Cyber Monday was born. The term was first used in November 2005 after research showed that one of the biggest online shopping days of the year in the USA was the Monday after Thanksgiving. The New York Times reported that “Cyber Monday grew out of the observation that millions of otherwise productive working Americans, fresh off a Thanksgiving weekend of window shopping, were returning to high-speed Internet connections at work Monday and buying what they liked."
The name quickly caught on around the world. An article published by the Guardian newspaper in 2009 reported that UK online retailers were calling Cyber Monday the busiest internet shopping day of the year. The report noted that Cyber Monday in the UK commonly falls on the same day as Cyber Monday in the USA, even though the Thanksgiving holiday is generally not celebrated in the UK.
Today, Black Friday and Cyber Monday have evolved into something larger; it is no longer a single day in the shopping calendar. For some retailers, it is a long weekend; for others, the special offers run throughout November to encourage people to start their Christmas shopping early.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are popular for three big reasons. First, they encourage a sense of anticipation - no one knows exactly which products will be discounted or how significant the discounts will be. Similarly, no one knows which stores will be offering exclusive merchandise that isn’t available at other times of the year. These special, limited-time product releases help fuel the excitement and determination to secure something while there is still time to do so. Thirdly, these events encourage participation, building a sense of community as people work together to secure the best offers.
But Black Friday and Cyber Monday aren’t just about chasing bargains. They appeal to us because everyone loves the thrill of the hunt, the delight that comes from discovering something we want at a price we can afford. Much like a collector in search of a rare coin, the bargain hunter enjoys the excitement of the pursuit, the joy of the acquisition and the story of how they came to track it down.
The timeless appeal of the bargain hunt proves that we are all collectors at heart.
