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According to the US National Retail Federation an estimated 116 million people will shop online or in stores on the Friday after the US Thanksgiving Holiday. Over the entire Thanksgiving holiday weekend (Thursday-Sunday) 164 million people will be shopping in preparation for Christmas. The day after Thanksgiving is traditionally known as Black Friday, a day for retailers to get in the back for shoppers to drive thanks to deals and the upcoming gift giving season.  In recent years it has spread well past Thanksgiving week. Retailers are beginning Black Friday sales on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and pushing the sales int Cyber Monday the week after. These so called “pre-Black Friday” sales have even stretched into “pre-pre-Black Friday” is the result of stores spending years trying to beat competitors to the punch.

This competition means that stores are trying to attract the most customers by introducing their sales earlier and earlier to generate maximum foot traffic. Although, competition is often healthy for retailers, these aggressive and attended sales to attract customers are having a negative impact on retailers. To offer these sales to customers retailers have to budget for a lot of staff and increase their inventory. The results are retailers experiencing skyrocketing operational costs. Though a move toward e-commerce has made this easier for retailers to manage Black Friday, it also means that customers no longer have to wait outside of stores in long lines to get door buster savings. In 2017, the National Retail Federation claimed that 174 million Americans shopped over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend and 58 million of those Americans shopped exclusively online. This illustrates that while sales exist throughout November, American shoppers continue to be attracted to the ‘tradition’ of shopping on Black Friday.

 

Source： https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/11/20/18105044/black-friday-november-shopping-season