ALEX LASSITER: Hello, lovely people! It’s Alex Lassiter with the Minnesota Daily, and you’re listening to In The Know, a podcast dedicated to the University of Minnesota.
As we get closer to the end of the month, one of my favorite things to do after the Thanksgiving parade is done being marched, the feast is tucked away and the game has been played, is to crack open my laptop and start browsing for the best Black Friday deals. Aside from the holidays we talked about in my last episode, Black Friday is the last major event in November that really kicks off the rush of “buy, buy, buy” that takes up most of December.
Now, you may be wondering, “But Alex, you just talked about all of these other holidays in November, why didn’t you do Black Friday in that episode? Make this one about how dolphins are secretly plotting to take over the world like I’ve been emailing you about for the past two weeks!”
And I get it, my dear listener, I really do. But retail and consumer studies lecturer Jaye Thompson says technically, Black Friday isn’t an officially recognized holiday, and y’all know how I love my technicalities.
JAYE THOMPSON: A lot of people have the idea that Black Friday is a national holiday or something of the sort. And just to be clear, as far as I know, as of today, it is not a federal holiday. It is not a bank holiday. It is simply just the day after Thanksgiving that is known for these deep discounts and consumer excitement.
LASSITER: And the reason it’s called Black Friday? It seems to all come down to whether your business had an overall profit or a loss during the year.
THOMPSON: And when it’s profitable, you are in the black. You use black ink and it is just normal. When it is a loss, you write “in the red.” And so you use a red pen to denote that your business achieved a loss this year.
And so that concept of taking a holiday and turning your business around from in the red to in the black is where I’ve always learned as just a human, a student of the industry, my own personal knowledge of the case. That’s what I always thought Black Friday was about, like making sure your business was profitable for the end of the year and you close your books.
LASSITER: But, is that really where the name comes from? According to an article by History.com, in the ’50s in Philadelphia, a huge crowd would come in for the yearly Army vs. Navy college football game. There was lots of shopping that happened the day before the game each year during that crowd surge.
Cops couldn’t control it, and so they nicknamed the time Black Friday in anticipation of a time of year they dreaded. This is also where the image of consumers trampling each other to be the first to grab a doorbuster deal in pop culture media comes from.
Of course, retailers didn’t exactly want this to be the customer perception of Black Friday. So when a name change to “Big Friday” didn’t work, they instead gave it the whimsical spin of it being about business expenses, and that stuck.
THOMPSON: I was around during the ’80s and the ’90s when all this was a big thing. And, you know, we had the Cabbage Patch Dolls and the Garbage Pail Kids, all the coveted items that you, y’know, we didn’t have the internet to find out where they were.
You just had to go out to the store that day and find them and wait in lines. And like, I do have memories of chasing down the exact item I saw in a catalog and, you know, my parents going in with cash and trying to find it, you know? And it was exciting. It was kind of dangerous.
LASSITER: When I was a kid, I certainly remember seeing Black Friday advertisements popping up and thinking to myself, “Oh man, I wonder how crowded the stores will get this year.”
But after a certain point, I started seeing ads for this weird new day called “Cyber Monday,” where you could shop online and get the same great deals as Black Friday without the hassle of going into the store. Retail and consumer studies professor Hyunjoo Im says once the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the shift to online shopping became a mainstay.
HYUNJOO IM: Our audience is familiar with all those Black Friday shopping, staying overnight in the parking lot, waiting in line and stuff like that. That’s kind of craze going on with that doorbuster deal that they want to get into. Online shopping, certainly you can do a lot of those stuff without needing to go through that type of physical environment, which is nice.
Even before the pandemic, we started to see the online sales spiking up because the Cyber Monday deals were coming up and Black Friday deals were also showing up online too, so people were going online. Maybe they pay a little more, maybe they know that, but at the same time, they also pay for that small little difference by not having to go through that ordeal themselves.
LASSITER: Though Black Friday kicks off the shopping spree season pretty late here in the States, the rush to ring in the holiday season overseas has already started.
IM: This is really, like, almost the holiday mood that you go out and buy gifts and buy some things, and here are the best deals of the year. So you get to treat yourself, treat others. It’s a lot of deal-driven excitement plus that mood of holiday. It’s kind of crazy that at least maybe about a decade ago, Black Friday really began on Black Friday, like after Thanksgiving. But I mean, we see Black Friday deals now, it’s Nov. 11, which is actually Singles Day in China.
THOMPSON: In the United States, we participate in Singles Day. It’s a small holiday, three point something billion dollars. But for them, it’s like almost $14 billion a day. And it goes on for 11 days starting today to celebrate gifts to yourself if you’re single.
LASSITER: Even though it takes us a little later than Singles Day to get in gear in America, the holiday shopping season starts off with a pretty big bang. Thanksgiving is Day One, then comes Black Friday, and then Small Business Saturday — a day encouraging consumers to support smaller stores.
THOMPSON: Then you have what they call Sofa Sunday, and now Cyber Monday, which is Black Friday now trying to become Cyber Week, right? So those five days are huge in the United States, almost 200 million people engage in that. And so it’s a big deal, right?
LASSITER: Thanksgiving for the turkey, Black Friday for the blowouts, Saturday to shop small, Sunday for sectionals (and other furniture) and Cyber Monday to shop from behind your computer monitor. This five-day stretch of buy, buy, buy results in one of the biggest moneymakers for retailers nationwide, all year. Research from Statista projects over $39 billion of revenue during Cyber Week 2024 — two billion dollars more in revenue than last year.
Im says there are actually some psychological reasons behind why the act of buying with a discount catapulted Black Friday into a mainstay holiday.
IM: There’s a classical concept called “deal proneness,” or some kind of an emotional excitement that deals create. It’s not just about me needing this product or wanting this product. Sometimes it’s about getting the best deal and that kind of proves that you are a good shopper. So for a lot of people, it turns into almost like a game, like, “How much of a better deal that I can get?”
LASSITER: So, that’s how you get a holiday that spans generations like Black Friday. By implementing deals that feel special or exclusive, you turn shopping into a game that the whole family can play.
THOMPSON: For me, as a child, like, it was a huge tradition to go with, like, all the generations shopping on Black Friday. Like, my mom, my grandma, my sisters, my aunts. We would all go out as, like, a family event, we would always eat lunch at the Ruby Tuesday.
It just is what we would do. And so like the tradition element and shopping as a family, I don’t know. I feel like culturally that’s not, I don’t see a ton of that anymore.
LASSITER: If you’re wanting to take the leap and join the herd of mall crowds, Im and Thompson both have advice for any intrepid shoppers looking to gear up and brave the wilderness.
IM: I would say it’s probably better to go to the store that you’re familiar with so that you know the store layouts and where to go and what to pick up. Do your research ahead of time. Have a list of stuff that you want to check for sure so that you don’t just, you know, weave through those crowds and get lost. It’s gonna be a “go in, pick up the stuff, and then get out as soon as possible” type of scenario.
This is not the environment where you can enjoy the shopping environment with your friends and just chat and, you know, look around. This is not a window shopping kind of an environment. It’s more of a very goal-driven environment. So you have to be ready for that.
THOMPSON: Not only do we have the first mall ever over at Southdale which I encourage people to go check out—they’ve done some remodeling recently. Across the street you have the Galleria and Ridgedale which are two luxury retailer malls.
You have the other end of the spectrum. We have two outlets in the Twin Cities — Albertville and Eden Prairie. That’s big-time, right? Most cities only have one.
And then we obviously have the flagship Mall of America, you know, the largest mall in America and tons of entertainment to be had there. So I think it’s just, yeah, “Why aren’t you getting out there?”
Go see what it’s like. Malls have changed. They’re now not just for shopping, they’re for entertaining as well. So we’re lucky to be here in the Twin Cities with all this retail action and so I encourage people to enjoy it.
LASSITER: Whether you’re staying in-state or traveling, hunting in the wild or surfing the web, Black Friday has evolved to fit any need of any shopper. It’s both interesting and a little bewildering to see. It makes me wonder if in another five years, we’ll be back to fighting each other over which Amazon drone is delivering our package.
And knowing a little more about why we flock to stores and sites to get a steal on these deals makes me feel a little more confident in my choice to stay snuggled up at home and cracking open my laptop to shop.
This episode was written by Alex Lassiter and produced by Kaylie Sirovy. As always, we appreciate you listening in and feel free to send a message to our email inbox at [email protected] with any questions, comments, concerns or ideas for episodes you’d like to see us produce this season. I’m Alex, and this has been In The Know. Take care, y’all.
