The Impacts of The Black Friday: What Was Achieved with This Phenomenon

For many people, Black Friday is the beginning of their holiday shopping season. Customers see it as a fun and exhilarating experience but most importantly, as great opportunity to save hundreds of dollars. Businesses see the day as an opportunity to finally turn a profit for the year and to get many customers into their doors.

In order to support the expected turn out of customers for Black Friday this year, many businesses have extended their opening hours even earlier than before. Stores such as Target and Wal-Mart plan to have discounts of 30% or more off of popular items. More expensive products are planned to be discounted several hundred dollars.

Customers are able to economize by shopping on Black Friday. Black Friday features many good deals on electronics such as HDTVs, laptops, and cameras that aren’t available during other times of the year. Customers should be weary of buying other season specific goods such as winter apparel and holiday decorations though, as it tends to be more expensive during this time of the year. As long as customers adhere to buying non-seasonal items during Black Friday, they will be able to receive the best deals.

Black Friday involves a cost for both the customer shopping, and the businesses operating. Almost all businesses have some type of sale on Black Friday and sometimes even before Black Friday on Thanksgiving. Customers who want the best deals often have to wait in lines for hours outside of the different businesses and then once inside, must wait in the long check- out lines. By waiting in these lines, customers are giving up other deals that they could have found at the cacophony of other businesses. For the businesses, they must have more workers on hand to deal with the increased customer levels in the store. This leads to them having to pay their workers more money that they could have spent in other areas of their business.

Black Friday offers many incentives. Customers come out to different stores in the middle of the night because of the amazing deals that they are being offered. If the stores just had normal sales, or not as deeply discounted sales, there would be no reason for customers to flock to their stores, leaving the stores with not being able to make as much money.

For businesses in America, the holidays are seen as a great opportunity for making money. Every year, Christmas commercials are introduced earlier and earlier so that businesses can entice their customers to start shopping for it in advance. Black Friday is just a part of this grand scheme for businesses to increase their profits. As there is an increasingly large emphasis on the holiday season, more incentives will be introduced to keep customers shopping.

Businesses are able to create wealth through voluntary trade. During Black Friday, all stores that are open are competing with the other stores that are open for customers. This leads to businesses trying on one-up their competition through having extended hours of operation and even creating deeper discounts than the stores surrounding them. These businesses are giving up the money that could be made on lesser discounted items in the hopes that their sales will be more inviting to customers so that they’ll be able to sell more and make an increased profit.

The consequences of Black Friday lie in the future. As competition for customers on Black Friday becomes more cutthroat between businesses, they will most likely go to extreme measures to get these customers. In the future, businesses will most likely start opening their doors for Black Friday on Thanksgiving morning in order to maximize the amount of customers they receive. This will lead to an increased amount of worker complaints as they will not be able enjoy the day with their families.

The author’s view that Black Friday this year is featuring the biggest markdowns yet is correct. Over the years, Black Friday has featured an increasing amount of passionate buyers who go to extreme lengths to get the best deal for an item. Businesses have seen this and have responded accordingly with their deeper discounts. This article relates to class because we have discussed perfectly competitive markets. The market during Black Friday can be seen as somewhat perfectly competitive because there are many buyers and sellers, consumers are able to readily turn to a different business for a better price of a good they may see as things are deeply discounted, and the prices set by these businesses are determined by the supply and demand for them. In the future, businesses will most likely continue to push the holidays, in order to see an increase in profits by enticing their customers to shop for that perfect gift.