Black Friday Shopping

I was never familiar with Black Friday or Black Friday shopping. Though I’ve read about shoppers' experience last year –and even saw few photos of shopper turn-out, I was completely lost because we never have Black Fridays here. Well, we have mall and store sales similar to Black Friday but we never call it that.

So today, I looked it up and found out that:

Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving (which falls on the fourth Thursday in November) in the United States, where it is the beginning of the traditional Christmas shopping season. Black Friday is not an official holiday, but many employers give the day off, increasing the number of potential shoppers. And it’s one of the busiest retail shopping day of the year.

So it’s basically a HUGE, HUGE Sale and most stores usually open as early as 5AM! Now, I can very well understand the long queues and traffic jam a day after Thanksgiving. (Okay I did mention that I’ve seen photos and read bloggers’ account of what transpired last year.)

But what amazes me most is though Black Friday is still a long way off, I found out that as early as now, there are already thanksgiving ads about store sale information. But isn't that a win-win marketing strategy? This way, shoppers can scan items in advance and get more discounts.