Target and Walmart May Have Just Killed Black Friday as We Know It (inputmag.com) 84
An anonymous reader shares a report: Following Walmart's decision last week to shutter its doors on Thanksgiving Day over COVID-19 concerns, fellow big-box behemoth, Target, has announced that it will also be skipping this year's orgiastic capitalist pre-game for the good of consumers and workers. Well, that's the official position at least. "Historically, deal hunting and holiday shopping can mean crowded events, and this isn't a year for crowds," Target execs said in an official statement. It marks the first time since 2011 that the megastore will not be open on Thanksgiving -- a trend long criticized by labor activists for, you know, forcing underpaid retail workers to go into work and stare down deal-hungry shoppers instead of spending time with their own families.
It's important to note that these statements from Walmart, Target, and what many predict will be an increasing number of other retailers, are only announcing a moratorium on Thanksgiving pre-Black Friday sales events, and not a cancellation of actual Black Friday plans, which appear to still be going on as planned. In-store Thanksgiving sales first gained in popularity years back when online sales began to eat away at physical stores' holiday season profit margins. Turkey Day events consistently ranked outside the 10 busiest days of the year for most businesses while simultaneously lowering profits from Black Friday itself. So, if you can believe it, it appears this wave of decisions isn't exactly coming from the good of shareholders' hearts.
It's important to note that these statements from Walmart, Target, and what many predict will be an increasing number of other retailers, are only announcing a moratorium on Thanksgiving pre-Black Friday sales events, and not a cancellation of actual Black Friday plans, which appear to still be going on as planned. In-store Thanksgiving sales first gained in popularity years back when online sales began to eat away at physical stores' holiday season profit margins. Turkey Day events consistently ranked outside the 10 busiest days of the year for most businesses while simultaneously lowering profits from Black Friday itself. So, if you can believe it, it appears this wave of decisions isn't exactly coming from the good of shareholders' hearts.
Black Friday is scam anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
Black Friday is a scam anyway. Starting from jacking up the prices before Black Friday and ending up at making special Black Friday versions with different product numbers.
Re: (Score:3)
Fortunately we have price history sites so we can check now.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
" forcing underpaid retail"
Ah yes, those evil people held guns to the "underpaid" worker's heads instead of given them the opportunity to work and make more money for themselves. Or not.
And they were *forced* to work for wages that both parties agreed upon. The horror.
Re: Black Friday is scam anyway (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I just thought is was a disgusting display a greed and mass comsumption on a planet with resources and climate problem, really quite disgusting.
From the rest of the world's point of view USA Black Friday (why BLACK, because of the black person like behaviour, huh?!?) was really a quite disgusting display, one to be mocked and ridiculed.
They will at least have to change the name to white Friday because it is when all the rednecks come out to shop and make real animals out of themselves and each other.
Re: (Score:1)
From the rest of the world's point of view USA Black Friday (why BLACK, because of the black person like behaviour, huh?!?)
This is a disgustingly racist statement. It shows that you think poorly of black people. The "Black" from Black Friday comes from old accounting books where they used two types of ink to denote "in surplus" (black ink) or "in debt" (red ink, to stand out as a warning). These colors of ink led to the common phrases of "in the red" and "in the black". "Black Friday" is the Friday following Thanksgiving, where most Americans have the day off work, and it's close enough to Christmas that everyone is read to
Re:Black Friday is scam anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
And they were *forced* to work for wages that both parties agreed upon. The horror.
Yep. Welcome to the world of the poor class. Where the choice is work for something below a living wage, or starving because in the USA being human is not reason enough to have dignity, you need to be well off too.
Wait ... judging by your comment you actually may be serious. Well Mr Privileged I you should step off your horse and look around at the poor around you. Some perspective may help you look like less of an ignorant arse.
Re: (Score:2)
And they were *forced* to work for wages that both parties agreed upon. The horror.
What's the option here for someone who needs the income to feed themselves, make rent, or heaven forbid provide for their family -- that they quit because their company demands they work on a holiday? Being forced is not an exaggeration; they do not have a choice other than one which does direct damage to themselves. That's literally the definition of being forced.
Parent AC comment is a troll.
Re: (Score:2)
If you're talking about things like keepa and camelcamelcamel, I hope you're aware they get their Amazon price history by asking Amazon for a price history and then showing it to you. They do not scrape data from you and other users who have looked at the same product.
Re: (Score:2)
Yep, and Price Spy etc. I suppose people could lie in their data but aside from the risk of being discovered and losing access to valuable information in exchange (the alert levels users set indicate the price they are willing to pay), other retailers often scrape them and match prices anyway so it just makes them look expensive.
Re: (Score:2)
For certain more mundane products maybe, but the "door busters" are always pretty sweet deals, just limited in quantity. If I've ever bought a TV I've always held off until Black Friday (eg, last year Wal-mart had a 65" for $278 - that is WELL below normal selling price), and even on other days I'd often pop in after the opening rush to grab whatever video games I wanted that were on sale.
And for Wal-mart honestly its never been THAT crazy for me. Crowded yes, but basically if you want a certain one of th
Re: (Score:1)
There's almost always a better deal to be found online than in the store. The problem with a lot of Black Friday sales is that they're selling last year stock or even outright the same models but with inferior guts. Especially with displays, you'll see the model you wanted but it will be 1080p instead of 4K or the panel will not be an IPS panel.
It's almost always a scam, inferior product or clearance product.
Re: (Score:3)
Well no shit it's a clearance product, but that doesn't mean that it's a scam or a bad deal. I tend to keep TV's a LONG time. I've got 3 in the house. One I bought last year. One was bought 7 years ago. Another is 4 years old but when purchased it was replacing a 12 year old TV.
My point is that "last years model" doesn't mean a lot to me, and neither does a reduced feature set. When I buy cars I intentionally look for baseline models specifically because they're cheaper. I want AC and an auto transmi
Re: (Score:2)
I think even better deals show up in January. Holiday gift giving is over and the stores still have too much stock. Fewer crowds then which is my motivation.
Re: (Score:2)
Tons of returns as well that they'll mark down as Clearance.
Re: (Score:2)
I tend to keep TV's a LONG time. I've got 3 in the house. One I bought last year. One was bought 7 years ago. Another is 4 years old but when purchased it was replacing a 12 year old TV.
I guess I must be getting old. Even a 12 year old TV doesn't seem that old to me. Back in the era of CRT televisions I think the last one I had was over 20 years old. The one our family had before that was probably at least that old as well (might have been pushing 30 years). These days anything over 5 years old is considered ancient. 8^)
Re: (Score:3)
Door buster is another name for inventory clearance sale. Sure you did get a sweet TV. Walmart basically cleared their w
Re: (Score:2)
... last year Wal-mart had a 65" for $278 - that is WELL below normal selling price
Yesssss, but usually within 2 to 3 weeks those prices are everywhere as retailers gear up for the Christmas season sales blitz. It happens every year regular as clockwork.
Regular price: $500
Black Friday price: $250 (but only 5 per store)
Late Christmas season price: $259 ~ $279
January stock clearing price: $249
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Black Friday is scam anyway (Score:4, Informative)
Black Friday versions with different product numbers.
That's not just for Black Friday. Any store that "price matches" big ticket items will have model numbers that are unique to their store. Item 123456789 at a small retailer will be 123456789W at Walmart, or 123456789B at Best Buy. They won't price match those items because the part number isn't the same. Many times it's obvious because the digit that changes is the first letter of the store that's selling it.
Re: (Score:2)
Bingo. It's 99.999% hype and has been for the last 20 years.
And seriously- who in their right mind is willing to line up a day or two in advance for a few bucks off a TV? What's wrong with you people?
Black Friday was already dead (Score:5, Insightful)
Stores started holding their sales earlier and earlier. 6am, 3am, midnight, 6PM on Thanksgiving, then noon on Thanksgiving, then the prior Monday. They competed to see who could start their sales earlier and grab those Black Friday dollars. They killed Black Friday sales, not COVID.
Re: (Score:2)
The death of Black Friday seems a very small matter compared to the death of retail itself. Oh, you can have online 'black friday' sales, but the excitement of crowds and waiting in line before dawn were really the whole point.
Re:Black Friday was already dead (Score:5, Interesting)
We used to make an event out of it. We'd get up and zero dark thirty, go stand in lines before dawn, and have a shared experience with the other half-insane shoppers. It was fun, in a masochistic kind of way. But you could feel when it died about 5-6 years ago. Suddenly there were no lines. It got harder to tell which stores were going to have what deals and when. Your 5-hour shopping spree turned into 15 different trips to the store during a week-long trudge that nobody has time for when you're trying to prepare for a house full of people on Thanksgiving. The stores all blamed it on the economy, on online retailers, etc. Some of that is undoubtedly true, but the real reason it died was their own greed.
Re: (Score:2)
We used to make an event out of it. We'd get up and zero dark thirty, go stand in lines before dawn, and have a shared experience with the other half-insane shoppers. It was fun, in a masochistic kind of way.
Sounds positively horrible to me.
At this point, I don't set foot in a retail store between early September and mid January. Never mind the Wuflu.
Re: (Score:2)
Along those same lines... I usually make my last Costco trip of the year in early November.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
We used to make an event out of it. We'd get up and zero dark thirty, go stand in lines before dawn, and have a shared experience with the other half-insane shoppers.
Gotta be honest- that sounds like hell on earth to me, but to each their own.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd imagine that target.com and walmart.com will still be competing with amazon.com for the best Black Thursday online sales, though.
Let's face it... only the hard core shoppers were planning on going out this year anyway. The people who are willing to wait outside for 6 hours to buy a cheap TV to resell on eBay would have been out there, but the folks who actually spent money on Christmas gifts for their kids would not have been out there. You need those people for Black Thursday to be profitable.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I kept joking that it gets earlier every year. We still have CyberMondays though! :P
As I Know It? (Score:2)
Now get off my lawn!
Re: (Score:2)
My wife worked at Target for 20+ years, when they made her work Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year was the last straw for her. I had been pushing her to quit for years as the place got more and more abusive of their employees, so she finally did.
Black Friday died some years ago (Score:2)
Black Friday, as I knew it, died a few years back when retailers began pushing it before *Friday*.
It's not Walmart and Target that are killing it (Score:2)
Black Friday's importance has diminished over the last 10 years, but even if it hadn't, I wouldn't want to be in a large crowd until my local community was already at "safe enough to go to a packed movie theater"-status as far as COVID-19 goes.
It's simply not worth my health or risking me unknowingly making someone else sick just to save a few hundred bucks.
"Black" Friday? Prove it. (Score:2)
Let's not forget what Black Friday implies, with the term rooted in finance.
For those companies still wondering where you stand, here's a hint; If you're not a card-carrying member of the Too Big To Fail class, I highly doubt you have a valid reason to recognize Black Friday this year.
Probably not until at least 2022.
Re:"Black" Friday? Prove it. (Score:4, Informative)
The term is not 'rooted in finance'. It comes from the Philadelphia PD who, in the early 60s, called it 'black friday' because of the problems caused by all the vehicle and pedestrian traffic. The 'financial' explanation doesn't even make sense. All you have to do is look at quarterly reports to find out that the retailers do not generally operate at a loss for the first three quarters of the year.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Black Friday NOT Black Thursday (Score:2)
Bullshit headline (Score:5, Informative)
They're not killing blackfriday at all. They're just starting it *ON* Friday again, rather than pushing it further and further into Thursday.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Bullshit headline (Score:2)
This. Wake me up when they put Black Friday entirely online, to prevent crowds in their stores from spreading the virus. That will be real progress.
Probably looking for an excuse... (Score:2)
Gifts are for kids. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is how the Christmas season grew to a point where everyone was expected to give everyone a gift.
Here is a random trinket that you cannot use, to show that I acknowledged your existence as a non-enemy, giving you this gift to me means I feel less guilty about not getting a gift, and to you get something that has little value to you, because you didn't want it anyways.
For kids, gifts are exciting, as it is the only time a year they really get a lot of stuff just for them. Stuff they wanted Toys!
But still they will play for it for about a week, and fall back to their old favorites.
Just because something makes a lot of people money, it really doesn't mean it is really helping the economy. The Economy is more than spending money. But it is about building a wider infrastructure to support the population easier and meet with Supply the Demand for goods and services.
Re: (Score:2)
Make xmas just about spending time together, not spending money.
My GF and I do still exchange gifts, but we do this really weird
Re: (Score:2)
For quite a few years our family has done the Secret Santa thing (among the adults), as well as a White Elephant style exchange. In either case you are only buying for one adult, and you're spending $20-25 at most.
Everyone's kids transition to the "adult" group once they're in college.
As far as gifts for my wife - she generally gives me a wishlist of possible gifts, complete with hyperlinks. I have put serious effort into finding something off-list on multiple occasions, but it never ends up really wowing h
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
If you have that Wealthy Family Member or Friend who can give that gift then that is fine. However the pressure is for us to all exchange gifts all the time.
For this type of gift giving, I would prefer that it would be reserved for birthdays as it is more of an individual targeted day to buy a present.
However it isn't that my Friend and Family suck, it is just me as an adult, when I want something I buy it for myself when I want it. I don't sit around all year awaiting something. My Friends and Family
Re: (Score:2)
That may be true, but but rarely will that kind of gift ever come from a place like Walmart or Target or most any retailer that takes part in the Black Friday madness. If there is something in those stores that I want or need, I don't need it gifted to me because I've already bought it for myself. Because really there isn't much in those stores that's very expensive to an adult with a job that can set aside some savings over the last year. If I haven't bought it for myself, that's because I don't want it
As a relatively poor kid (Score:2)
Studies show the top 10% are responsible for around 30% of all spending. It's actually a big deal, since COVID is changing how they spend money, and we have so few people responsible for so much spending. We're a service sector based capitalist economy, so without sp
Re: As a relatively poor kid (Score:2)
We can't even get half the country to agree that creating 30 million new homeless would be a bad thing, or that the equivalent of $17/hr in unemployment (literally the median income) is "too generous"...
Is it really half though? I don't even think it's 30 million people that are that evil/stupid. The problem is that the people who will get screwed have no voice. I'm actually surprised the Democrats didn't bungled their version. I guess it is possible for them to get some things right. Unfortunately it's not possible for the Republicans to stop horse trading and scoring political points long enough to save the economy.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No I didn't.
Via taxes the government gets funds for nearly every product/service sold. But also more to the point. Free market capitalism allows for infrastructure growth by itself. Say I am a farmer and I grow and sell kale. 20 years ago it would have been a small crop, so I would be planting something else too. and probably just picking it by hand. People bought my kale, they liked it, and found out it was very healthy. So more people want to buy my kale. So I grow more of it, and make more money
Re: (Score:2)
Capitalism doesn't give a single shit about infrastructure beyond its own basic needs. Capitalism is incredibly selfish and unable to comprehend the smallest bit of altruism. Capitalism would still have us driving around on dirt roads, rural telephone and electric wouldn't be a thing, the levies and water retention dams made the dust bowl arable again wouldn't have happened.
It's not the gifts, it's the end of the year (Score:2)
Re: It's not the gifts, it's the end of the year (Score:2)
Re: Gifts are for kids. (Score:2)
That Radio Shack Astro Thunder tabletop I got back in 1985 was very cool though. I played with that game constantly.
I miss the days of the old VFD games. Even if they were to reissue it, they would just put in an LCD screen which would be a pale imitation of the old vacuum flourecent displays. In a way, VFDs made the old games feel more high tech than what we have now.
Re: (Score:2)
Yep, this ^^^^^
We don't do the "buy-a-surprise-gift-and-then-give-it" thing. We just ask each other what we want and there's no hard time limit or ask-by date.
Frankly, the holiday season has turned into a bore, driven by commercial lust.
Ah, Black Friday (Score:4, Insightful)
I have studiously avoided in-person Christmas shopping at any megastore for at least 10-15 years now. We have the internet, after all.
I have gone in person to some of our little local shops, when looking for Christmas presents. But that doesn't require fighting through mobs of people.
Re: Ah, Black Friday (Score:2)
"I have gone in person to some of our little local shops, when looking for Christmas presents. But that doesn't require fighting through mobs of people"
Go on Youtube and watch some of the Black Friday mob videos. They all look like idiots. And many are fighting over stupid shit like vacuum cleaners and crock pots.
What? I'm already in line! (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Black Friday Killed Itself. (Score:2)
Say whut? (Score:2)
From TFS:
Target and Walmart May Have Just Killed Black Friday as We Know It
It's important to note that these statements from Walmart, Target, and what many predict will be an increasing number of other retailers, are only announcing a moratorium on Thanksgiving pre-Black Friday sales events, and not a cancellation of actual Black Friday plans, which appear to still be going on as planned.
Who gives a fuck? (Score:2)
In the early days of Internet black fridays, there were good deals. And there were still good deals in B&M stores at the time. Now retailers have like a dozen off-brand TVs at super duper low prices, and a bunch of half-assed deals nobody gives a shit about. And those TVs are crap. Fuck black friday, and fuck Target, too. At least Wal-Mart has low prices, Target doesn't even have that. Everything I buy at Wal-Mart (mostly work clothes) is at least half again more expensive at Target.
Re: (Score:2)
Obviously (Score:2)
Killing Black Friday (Score:2)
Good.
"Black" Friday? More like "Red" Friday (Score:2)
Good (Score:2)
We can use a year without the annual cattle stampede.