Black Friday in Britain? Why?
Nov 25th, 2017, 12:45 PM
#22
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The media overhypes it, though. I don’t know how many people really get swept away in it. Or at least any more than they’d get swept away with any kind of sale. The people I know who do it go specifically with a list, and generally they do know how much they’re saving.
I don’t see why it would be any more concerning than people who are really into outlet mall shopping. And we get plenty of tourists, especially Australians, who are crazy for that. Generally speaking, I think the problem is less sales and more the general consumerism and waste around the holidays. That’s certainly not unique to the US.
I don’t see why it would be any more concerning than people who are really into outlet mall shopping. And we get plenty of tourists, especially Australians, who are crazy for that. Generally speaking, I think the problem is less sales and more the general consumerism and waste around the holidays. That’s certainly not unique to the US.
Nov 26th, 2017, 01:17 PM
#23
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Yeh Black Friday now stretches several days from what I see on TV ads. Has lots its cache but some folks just love the idea of getting in line hours early for a few freebies and good for them.
Nov 26th, 2017, 11:56 PM
#24
Trouble is now that brand USA has been destroyed by brand TRUMP (trumped you might say) then the ugly american is loose in the world and it feels very uncomfortable.
Still at least we don't have "KFC day" yet
Still at least we don't have "KFC day" yet
Nov 27th, 2017, 04:05 AM
#26
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Heavy discounts late in November (typically on the last Friday) didn't exist in the UK till 2010, when Amazon started doing them. They were followed in 2013 by Asda (a Walmart subsidiary) and gradually by some UK-owned retailers.
My memory is that the name was introduced by the media, not a retailer, and the term took a couple of years to migrate from newspaper copy to stores' promotional material. Certainly one of the US "Black Friday" pioneers told me that they long hesitated to use the term - because it'd look like Americanisation. Certainly the two US pioneers only started publicly talking about "Black Friday" long after UK competitors.
The US creation myth isn't really "stores don't break even till late Dec" anyway. Self-evidently, that can't be true of food chains or beachwear stores, and when the myth started, it was that <b> department stores </b> start making money in late November. Even were it true, it wouldn't be quite as shocking as it sounds: the norm among US retailers end their financial years at the end of Jan, so the myth is merely claiming that stores lose money for their first three quarters.
But two seconds looking at American retailers' quarterly results show how even that is codswallop. And as far as I can see: has been forever.
I doubt the fad - which is really so hard-wired in the US no commercial argument will kill it - will survive long in the UK.
Amazon petrifies UK retailers far less here: internet retailing is far more advanced than in the US, and the threat to conventional retailers comes from businesses like Primark, Aldi and Lidl who simply refuse to waste money on e-commerce. They've all put on share every year since the November madness started.
Asda was a real threat to other food chains before Walmart bought them: now they're just another player. And it's not just the Germans who are growing faster: non-discounters like Waitrose and even the new, food-credible, Co-op are now outperforming them.
Growth in UK retailing is coming from shops that don't engage in profit-destroying antics. Even the stupidest other UK retailers (a title for which there's intense competition) will realise over the next couple of years that throwing money away inevitably leads to bankruptcy.
In retailing as in almost everything else (except Internet unicorns) only the sane survive.
My memory is that the name was introduced by the media, not a retailer, and the term took a couple of years to migrate from newspaper copy to stores' promotional material. Certainly one of the US "Black Friday" pioneers told me that they long hesitated to use the term - because it'd look like Americanisation. Certainly the two US pioneers only started publicly talking about "Black Friday" long after UK competitors.
The US creation myth isn't really "stores don't break even till late Dec" anyway. Self-evidently, that can't be true of food chains or beachwear stores, and when the myth started, it was that <b> department stores </b> start making money in late November. Even were it true, it wouldn't be quite as shocking as it sounds: the norm among US retailers end their financial years at the end of Jan, so the myth is merely claiming that stores lose money for their first three quarters.
But two seconds looking at American retailers' quarterly results show how even that is codswallop. And as far as I can see: has been forever.
I doubt the fad - which is really so hard-wired in the US no commercial argument will kill it - will survive long in the UK.
Amazon petrifies UK retailers far less here: internet retailing is far more advanced than in the US, and the threat to conventional retailers comes from businesses like Primark, Aldi and Lidl who simply refuse to waste money on e-commerce. They've all put on share every year since the November madness started.
Asda was a real threat to other food chains before Walmart bought them: now they're just another player. And it's not just the Germans who are growing faster: non-discounters like Waitrose and even the new, food-credible, Co-op are now outperforming them.
Growth in UK retailing is coming from shops that don't engage in profit-destroying antics. Even the stupidest other UK retailers (a title for which there's intense competition) will realise over the next couple of years that throwing money away inevitably leads to bankruptcy.
In retailing as in almost everything else (except Internet unicorns) only the sane survive.
Nov 27th, 2017, 04:32 AM
#27
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None of this can be blamed on Donald Trump, unless you think Donald Trump invented capitalism. All of it predates Donald Trump, and folks, there simply is no Santa Claus.
The American tradition of retailers going all out for Chistmas at the end of November began with a NYC department store called Macy's, which inaugurated the Macy's Day parade on Thanksgiving Day in the US. Thanksgiving Day is always in the last part of November in the US, and the Macy's Day parade was broadcast on TV from NYC (and still is). This event "kicked off" the retail push for Christmas shopping.
Big cities, department stores and TV networks lost their monopoly powers beginning with the Reagan years -- even before the internet was invented. The rise of suburbanization brought with it "big box" chain stores in America that featured heavily discounted single products, such as Toys R'Us or Payless Shoes etc etc.
It waa the big box toy stores that mainly introduced "Black Friday" (the day after the US Thanksgiving Thursday), creating a frenzy around the idea of getting your child the most popular Xmas Toy-of-The=Year (remember the Cabbage Patch doll?)
Internet shopping only recently began to ape the "Black Friday" model.
For Europe, it has only been recently that many of the key elements for "Black Friday" retailing have fallen into place. But even before that, European retailers became interested in commercializing holidays American-style that hadn't previously existed in Europe. The introduction of hoo-hah around hallowee or St Valentines Day in Europe owes nothing to Donald Trump and everthing to globalization and income inequality (poor foreigners in 3rd world countries make it cehaply, the affluent asset-holders of the western democracies are lured into the idea of consume, consume, consume as entertainment, status, sopihstication, what have you).
The competition in Xmas market tourism in Europe makes in inevitable that every form of hucksterism is going to be employed to attract the affluent global tourist whose chief fun in traveling is from a consumer standpoint: Xmas junk, fatty foods, lots of liquor.
Donald Trump doesn't even drink. he's not even the epitome of the new global consumer. he's actually rather retro, and suspicious of all those cheap chinese goods.
Me? I'd blame it on the aspirations of the eurozone
The American tradition of retailers going all out for Chistmas at the end of November began with a NYC department store called Macy's, which inaugurated the Macy's Day parade on Thanksgiving Day in the US. Thanksgiving Day is always in the last part of November in the US, and the Macy's Day parade was broadcast on TV from NYC (and still is). This event "kicked off" the retail push for Christmas shopping.
Big cities, department stores and TV networks lost their monopoly powers beginning with the Reagan years -- even before the internet was invented. The rise of suburbanization brought with it "big box" chain stores in America that featured heavily discounted single products, such as Toys R'Us or Payless Shoes etc etc.
It waa the big box toy stores that mainly introduced "Black Friday" (the day after the US Thanksgiving Thursday), creating a frenzy around the idea of getting your child the most popular Xmas Toy-of-The=Year (remember the Cabbage Patch doll?)
Internet shopping only recently began to ape the "Black Friday" model.
For Europe, it has only been recently that many of the key elements for "Black Friday" retailing have fallen into place. But even before that, European retailers became interested in commercializing holidays American-style that hadn't previously existed in Europe. The introduction of hoo-hah around hallowee or St Valentines Day in Europe owes nothing to Donald Trump and everthing to globalization and income inequality (poor foreigners in 3rd world countries make it cehaply, the affluent asset-holders of the western democracies are lured into the idea of consume, consume, consume as entertainment, status, sopihstication, what have you).
The competition in Xmas market tourism in Europe makes in inevitable that every form of hucksterism is going to be employed to attract the affluent global tourist whose chief fun in traveling is from a consumer standpoint: Xmas junk, fatty foods, lots of liquor.
Donald Trump doesn't even drink. he's not even the epitome of the new global consumer. he's actually rather retro, and suspicious of all those cheap chinese goods.
Me? I'd blame it on the aspirations of the eurozone
Nov 27th, 2017, 05:01 AM
#29
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You can't beat something we nothing. People who voted for Trump had excellent reasons for not voting for the alternative, especially since the alternative didn't think their votes were worth anything, and projected a ideology to voters -- the actual holders of power in a democracy -- that they were needed and was needed instead was educated rule by the wealthy view. A majority of people in any functioning democracy are not going to vote for that, for the same reason turkeys don't vote for Xmas. A political party that thinks like that is dooming itself to irrelevancy.
There is an interesting American movie called "Miracle on 34th St" which encapsulates the earliest protests against the drive of retailers to encourage brainless consumerism from November through December connected to Xmas. People actually have disliked "Black Friday" type retainling for more than 50 years.
There is an interesting American movie called "Miracle on 34th St" which encapsulates the earliest protests against the drive of retailers to encourage brainless consumerism from November through December connected to Xmas. People actually have disliked "Black Friday" type retainling for more than 50 years.
Nov 27th, 2017, 05:04 AM
#30
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correcting bad keyboard typos:
You can't beat something with notihing.
Democrats projected an ideology to voters that they were not needed (or respected)
As far as I can tell, the opponents of Donald Trump still believe that broadcasting insults at voters will change things for the better. Would suggest a re-think.
You can't beat something with notihing.
Democrats projected an ideology to voters that they were not needed (or respected)
As far as I can tell, the opponents of Donald Trump still believe that broadcasting insults at voters will change things for the better. Would suggest a re-think.
Nov 27th, 2017, 07:52 AM
#32
Meanwhile, here in the home of Black Friday, the days of line-ups at 5 am to get one of the "limited quantity" giveaway items is gone. I am still using the $99 computer from a years ago Black friday. Now the sales start 2 weeks in advance, encroach on Thanksgiving Day itself, and continue beyond the actual Friday. And this year the sales are the usual percentage off inflated "reference prices" just like every other sale all year round, with no more giveaway prices. Dull, boring, not worth getting in line.
It's Gray Friday at best.
It's Gray Friday at best.
Nov 28th, 2017, 03:25 PM
#35
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_(shopping)
the real origin of the term Black Friday -nothing to do with turning red ink to black as most including moi thunk!
the real origin of the term Black Friday -nothing to do with turning red ink to black as most including moi thunk!
