What Will “Black Friday” Bring?
Consumer spending may be suffering from its sharpest declines in seven years, but retailers are still expecting big things from the holiday shopping season.
It all kicks off two days from now on “Black Friday,” i.e. the day after Thanksgiving, which has become synonymous with glitzy product displays, early morning “doorbuster” sales and teeming masses of bargain seekers aggressively pursuing the perfect gift (at the perfect price).
It’s pretty much “Ultimate Cage Match Shopping,” people, and this year the stakes are higher than ever for an American economy that’s teetering on the edge of government-induced implosion.
Cautious optimism abounds, though … ironically thanks to many of the factors that have been dragging the economy down of late.
From today’s edition of CNN Money:
Pent-up demand, lower gasoline prices and sharply cut projections could produce a better-than-expected holiday shopping weekend.
“Black Friday sales could meet or exceed low expectations,” said Daniel Binder, retail analyst at Jefferies & Co. “Consumers may be more willing to fight the crowds this year out of a need to find great value as they try to meet holiday budgets.”
With the bad economy, “people are afraid to talk about a silver lining,” said Scott Krugman, spokesman for the National Retail Federation. “But the potential is there to surprise because a number of factors are in play.”
The NRF projects U.S. 2008 holiday sales will rise a modest 2.2% over last year to $470 billion, with the number of shoppers over the Black Friday weekend expected to fall to 128 million from 135 million last year.
Commonly mistaken as the busiest shopping day of the year (that actually comes on the Saturday before Christmas), “Black Friday” get its name from corporate ledgers, which typically begin turning a profit at this time of the year (i.e. operating “in the black”).
And since “black” in this case means something good, the NAACP doesn’t have a problem with the terminology.
Unlike black hole, which is bad, and thus offensive.
