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5 Black Friday Myths The Media Want You To Believe.
No big brother conspiracies here. This is from "Cracked Magazine", and if we can't trust them, who do we have?
The alarms start going off at 3:30 in the morning. Soon-to-be shoppers stumble angrily out of bed with fanny packs of coupons strapped to their waists. Coffee begins working its way through the Thanksgiving-themed traffic jam in your entrails. Showers are neglected. Puppies are kicked. Bleary-eyed motorists start pulling out of driveways, and it becomes official. The Holiday Shopping Season has begun.
Even if you don't make the trip to the mall every Black Friday, you probably assume everyone out there is fighting through waves of toy riots and security guards to be the first ones in line. In reality, most of what you believe about Black Friday is a myth, right down to the day it falls on.
#5. It's the Biggest Shopping Day of the Year
What You Think:
Why else would the local news cover something as boring as shopping? You also may have heard, or just assumed, that online shopping was taking a bite out of Black Friday's lead over every other day of the year. This makes sense because it offers an alternative for people who don't want to suffer through long lines and threats of death by stampede. Just shop from home on any other day of the year, right?
But Actually ...
Actually, Black Friday wasn't the biggest shopping day of the year until the advent of online shopping. Before that, it was rarely even in the top five.
So why was the media paying so much attention to the fifth-biggest shopping day of the year? Well, partially because it's a slow news day. With most people off from work and spending time at home with their family, the media has a captive audience and approximately nothing to talk about. So they began reporting on the one sector of the economy that was actually working (instead of pretending to work while totally mailing it in, like the media).
Of course, stories about how everyone's out spending money weren't drawing complaints from the advertisers.
Black Friday finally did become the top revenue earner in 2003 by giving people who would rather stay home with their family a way to get at the deals. Weirdly, 2003 was right around when the media started reporting the idea that Black Friday was in trouble, and telling us about new players in the game like Cyber Monday -- the Monday after Thanksgiving, when online sales (or "cyber sales," as they're called by absolutely no one) supposedly spike.
So the story that the media had been reporting for years that Black Friday is the biggest shopping day of the year finally came true, and suddenly they want to complicate it with a bunch of other days when you have to remember to wear riot gear to the mall.
This is because of a new strategy among retailers to make holiday shopping into a four-week period. While Walmart holds the record for earliest holiday promotion with a special roll back on October 1, the majority of stores begin their bargains the first week of November.
Cyber Monday was created in 2005 as a crafty marketing plan from Shop.org, an association for "e-tailers." Shop.org encouraged their members to create special ads for that Monday, and after a few years it caught on. In 2010, Cyber Monday took in over a billion dollars in online revenue, the largest amount for any day in history.
Presumably, when Cyber Monday officially takes the biggest shopping day title from Black Friday, we'll start hearing about how Cyber Monday is in danger of losing its spot as the hottest shopping day of the year to "Tip Jar Tuesdays," when consumers just empty their wallets into jars by the cash register.
Continued here:
http://www.cracked.com/article_19572_5-black-friday-myths-media-wants-you-to-believe.html
Even if you don't make the trip to the mall every Black Friday, you probably assume everyone out there is fighting through waves of toy riots and security guards to be the first ones in line. In reality, most of what you believe about Black Friday is a myth, right down to the day it falls on.
#5. It's the Biggest Shopping Day of the Year
What You Think:
Why else would the local news cover something as boring as shopping? You also may have heard, or just assumed, that online shopping was taking a bite out of Black Friday's lead over every other day of the year. This makes sense because it offers an alternative for people who don't want to suffer through long lines and threats of death by stampede. Just shop from home on any other day of the year, right?
But Actually ...
Actually, Black Friday wasn't the biggest shopping day of the year until the advent of online shopping. Before that, it was rarely even in the top five.
So why was the media paying so much attention to the fifth-biggest shopping day of the year? Well, partially because it's a slow news day. With most people off from work and spending time at home with their family, the media has a captive audience and approximately nothing to talk about. So they began reporting on the one sector of the economy that was actually working (instead of pretending to work while totally mailing it in, like the media).
Of course, stories about how everyone's out spending money weren't drawing complaints from the advertisers.
Black Friday finally did become the top revenue earner in 2003 by giving people who would rather stay home with their family a way to get at the deals. Weirdly, 2003 was right around when the media started reporting the idea that Black Friday was in trouble, and telling us about new players in the game like Cyber Monday -- the Monday after Thanksgiving, when online sales (or "cyber sales," as they're called by absolutely no one) supposedly spike.
So the story that the media had been reporting for years that Black Friday is the biggest shopping day of the year finally came true, and suddenly they want to complicate it with a bunch of other days when you have to remember to wear riot gear to the mall.
This is because of a new strategy among retailers to make holiday shopping into a four-week period. While Walmart holds the record for earliest holiday promotion with a special roll back on October 1, the majority of stores begin their bargains the first week of November.
Cyber Monday was created in 2005 as a crafty marketing plan from Shop.org, an association for "e-tailers." Shop.org encouraged their members to create special ads for that Monday, and after a few years it caught on. In 2010, Cyber Monday took in over a billion dollars in online revenue, the largest amount for any day in history.
Presumably, when Cyber Monday officially takes the biggest shopping day title from Black Friday, we'll start hearing about how Cyber Monday is in danger of losing its spot as the hottest shopping day of the year to "Tip Jar Tuesdays," when consumers just empty their wallets into jars by the cash register.
Continued here:
http://www.cracked.com/article_19572_5-black-friday-myths-media-wants-you-to-believe.html
