The big Christmas shopping in the United States generally starts after Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is the fourth Thursday in November every year, so it’s the second day and the first day of American shopping. On this day, American malls will launch a large number of discounts and promotions for the last large-scale promotion at the end of the year. Because American shopping malls generally record deficits with red pens and record profits with black pens, and the frenzied buying on the Friday after Thanksgiving has greatly increased the profits of shopping malls, so it is called Black Friday by businesses.

Merchants expect to make the most money for the year by starting Christmas shopping on this day.

Origin development

There are many theories about the origin of “Black Friday”, one of which refers to the long queues of people who go to the mall to shop on the Friday after Thanksgiving. A more common view is that since this day is the first day of business after Thanksgiving (the fourth Thursday in November), it is the traditional and grand Christmas in the United States, and people usually start Christmas shopping from this day. Many stores will be filled with customers and have a large amount of money.

Traditionally, different colors of ink are used for bookkeeping, with red for losses or deficits, and black for profits. So this Friday is called Black Friday, to indicate that this day is expected to be profitable. Because the discount activities in stores generally start at midnight after Thanksgiving (that is, 0:00 on Friday), and start the next day after Thanksgiving, people who want to buy bargains must rush to the mall in the dark to queue up to buy bargains, which can also be Considered a source of “Black Friday”. This behavior has a very vivid saying, called Early Bird (early bird).

November and December are traditional shopping seasons in the United States, and “Black Friday” is the craziest shopping day in the year for Americans. And store employees used the name Black Friday to make fun of it, saying it would be a busy day. And some groups protesting consumerism also deliberately chose this day as a non-consumption day.

On Black Friday, most stores open at five or six in the morning, and some even earlier. Merchants will also take measures such as placing advertisements in newspapers a few days before Thanksgiving, issuing coupons, and slashing prices on products to attract customers. Many consumers see this day as a prime time to prepare Christmas gifts or get a bargain, and many popular stores (such as Walmart) will have long queues the night before due to the limited number of discounted items. The moment the store opens, there are occasional stampedes due to overcrowding.

Since merchants do not announce their own list of price-cut products until the last minute, and regard this as a trade secret, and the price-cut information obtained from various channels often appeared on the Internet a few weeks ago, causing some legal disputes. . In order to avoid the negative connotations and associations brought by black, some merchants (such as Toys Rus and Best Buy) usually use the name “Green Friday”, where green refers to the color of US dollar bills.

Sino-US cooperation

As a shopping carnival in the United States, “Black Friday” is far from domestic consumers in China. However, since 2014, the four major department stores in the United States have announced their support for Alipay overseas direct mail, making the four major department stores become “Taobao” in a second.

Social evaluation

Although Black Friday shopping is booming, the boom seems to reflect a depression in another sense. Some commented that the popularity of “Black Friday” is precisely because many people are afraid to spend money to buy things, and they are waiting for the “shopping season” after Thanksgiving to start discounted products.