Impact of Black Friday and Cyber Friday on Our Economy

Black Friday is the following Thanksgiving Day in the United States, traditionally the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. Black Friday is not an official holiday, but many workers have the day off as part of the Thanksgiving holiday, this increases the number of potential shoppers. Retailers often decorate for the Christmas and holiday season weeks beforehand. Many retailers open extremely early, with most of the retailers typically opening at 5 A.M. or even earlier. Retailers use Black Friday to kick off the holiday season to use much of their products to go from the red to the black.

As Black Friday has progressed along with retailors marketing their products and their sales, it has become a national day of shopping to get the best deals. Americans mainly go shopping on this day to get huge deals for Christmas presents. Stores have even taken this great opportunity to open their establishments for 24 hours. Just last year, consumers spent a whopping $57,400,000,000 with each consumer individually spending $410 on average. The #1 retailor customers purchased from and camped out at was Best Buy. All of the statistics are based on 2013 and this year was projected to be an 11% increase.

Thanksgiving traditions don't end on Thanksgiving Day. In the 1950s, the day after Thanksgiving was called Black Friday by factory managers because so many workers called in sick and the Philadelphia Police Department took to calling the day Black Friday to describe the traffic jams, crowds and shoplifters during the start of the holiday shopping season. Black Friday signals the start of the holiday shopping season, but it may be a tradition that's continuing to evolve as stores vie to be the earliest to open Thanksgiving Day.

The aftermath of the Stock Market Crash of 1929 went something like this- unemployment rose to twenty-five percent, wages fell to forty-two percent, United States economic growth decreased fifty percent, and world trade plummeted sixty-five percent. The Dow Jones Industry Average dropped twenty-five percent in four days, losing thirty billion dollars in market value. That is equivalent to three hundred ninety-six billion dollars today- more than the total cost of World War I. Billions of dollars were lost, wiping out thousands of investors. By 1932 stocks were worth only twenty percent of their original value in the summer of 1929. And in less than a year, the Dow dropped ninety percent from its record-high. “In the aftermath of Black Tuesday,

Around the holidays, the department stores steps up is discount game even more. The Kohl’s Black Friday sale is actually a shopping extravaganza that begins before Thanksgiving and lasts after the Biggest Shopping Day of the Year.

The Stock Market crash was something nobody expected, it came out of nowhere and striked fear into the american people. Many people started to panic which lead to a lot of poverty and people struggling economically to support their families. It all started on October 29, 1929 which today we know it as “Black Tuesday.”. “On Black Tuesday when the stock market crashed, billions of the people’s and Bank’s dollars were lost as the world went downward” ( Stock Market Crash). This was known to be the largest economic downturn in history. After all of the chaos with the economy the crash of the stock market led to the Great Depression. The Great Depression advanced the overall economic collapse of the U.S which lead to a lot of symptoms.

“On October 29,1929, Black Tuesday hit Wall Street as investors traded some 16 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day. Billions of dollars were lost, wiping out thousands of investors. In the aftermath of Black Tuesday, America and the rest of the industrialized world spiraled downward..” (Stock Market Crash of 1929) The Stock Market Crash was significant because it marked the start of the Great Depression. The Great Depression was the biggest economic downturn in American History. It not only caused millions of people to become jobless, but it also caused thousands to lose their life savings. People started to live in horrible conditions and they even began starving.

Since 1992, an annual “Buy Nothing Day” has been held in many countries to show people the detrimental effects of overconsumption. This event often coincides with Black Friday―the prime time for eager shoppers after Thanksgiving festivities. The term “Black Friday” originated from a financial crisis in the late 1800s, but that memory changed to display one of busy roads, packed department stores, and post-Thanksgiving chaos (Pruitt). In order to raise awareness, supporters of Buy Nothing Day argued that events like Black Friday cause damage to the economy and environment. Considering counterfeit advertising and the environmental hazards of a day like Black Friday, a yearly Buy Nothing Day will be beneficial to society.

While the captivating Roaring Twenties seemed as if it were a time of exceptional success through rapidly increasing economic prosperity and somewhat radical social change, it ended with a rather large bang, leaving the citizens of the United States encumbered with numerous hardships. Hallucinations of this prosperity were created through a faulty system of credit. This flawed practice of loaning money to undeserving people manifested a shaky foundation on which the US economy sat upon. Building up such tension in the economy lead up to the stock market crash of 1929. As a result of the crash, many people were left unemployed, creating a massive restraint on industrial production. The Great Crash created the most detrimental impact to the United States during the 1920s by generating mass amounts of poverty among people.

Even though you can get with your family and be thankful and then go shopping until your legs hurt it can go either way. We should not have Black Friday on thanksgiving because Thanksgiving is for sharing and being thankful and if everybody goes shopping what's the point of even having Thanksgiving then and you should be with your family during all of Thanksgiving not only half of it.

September 11, 2001. I was busy finishing my “Rapport de Stage” in the Mackworth College Library, Derby, England, when a lady came to spread the bad news. Four commercial jetliners were hijacked and diverted from their paths to be used as guided missiles. Two of the jetliners ended up by crashing into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, New York City, around 9:00 a.m. local time. Half an hour later, the third jetliner crashed into the Pentagon, whereas the forth one, supposedly on its way to Washington D.C., crashed somewhere in Pennsylvania. However, the implications of that Black Tuesday were far more complicated than the mere reported facts.

`Best Buy recognizes that there are social, environmental and economic impacts that happen throughout the value chain. They take action by taking responsibility of mining for raw material, to the reuse and recycling of the materials once the products life cycle has come on an end. They are committed to making the world a better place, another way they do this is by reducing the use of carbon and promoting the use of carbon.

The first ever Buy Nothing Day was held in Canada on 1992. Buy Nothing Day was organized as a day where no goods would be purchased, and as a result of this boycott of goods it would raise awareness of the ethical and environmental implications of overconsumption. This is a great and innovative idea that gives publicity to a neglected issue, which is the implications of overconsumption. Nowadays people do not realize how much damage overconsumption actually does to our world. They fail to realize that their brand new Nike sneakers were made by child labor in a crammed sweatshop somewhere in Asia. They fail to realize how much pollution was released into the environment from mass production in factories, so that they could

Holidays have always been known to affect our consumer culture for many years, but how it all began eludes many people and very few studies have been completed on it. Even though some say that the subject is too broad to precisely identify how holidays, especially Christmas, directly affect our market, I have found that people’s values, expectations and rituals related to holidays can cause an excessive amount of spending among our society. Most people are unaware that over the centuries holidays have become such a profitable time of year for industries that they now starting to promote gift ideas on an average of a month and a half ahead of actual holiday dates to meet consumer demands.

People may get caught up in the excitement of the day, and that can help them to spend even more money. While waiting in line, customers at the front of the line seem to be excited and happy. However, at the end of the line, customers appear to be more frustrated and anxious. Some consumers plan their Black Friday shopping trips weeks in advance. There are many websites available for people to view Black Friday advertisements online, before they are supposed to be released to the public. Walmart has tried year after year for the advertisements not to be leaked, but they usually end up on these websites before they are supposed to (4 Years Strong: Walmart Sends Another Cease & Desist, 2011). Stores may not want to have their advertisements released early for a couple of reasons. First, consumers having the ability to research products and having too much time to explore all of their options may mean that consumers will not make as many spontaneous purchases on Black Friday. They also do not want to have their competition see their deals, and then have them beat their prices. Having the advertisements earlier though means consumers are able to plan what stores they want to go to, which may lead to less chaos on the actual day. People are motivated by saving money on Black Friday. Some consumers may even see it as a competition. For some, because there is only a limited selection available for many of the items that are