The one-day shopping extravaganza is still a big thing: retail expert
Posted November 28, 2014 11:06 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – It’s the big day — you can’t escape hearing about Black Friday, even if you tried.
It may seem like the idea of “one day shopping sprees” like Black Friday and Boxing Day are over, but it’s still very much a thing.
Many US retailers cut into their own Black Friday numbers by opening yesterday and offering their sales online. And “Boxing Day” sales are now typically “Boxing Week” sales.
David Ian Gray with Dig 360 Consulting says the idea of a “day” is meant to do one thing: “Create excitement for people to shop. There’s a group… that really loves the hunt and surge on these days to go get the deal.”
In the US, we’re hearing stock prices for Walmart and Target are up on optimism about good numbers, and Best Buy’s US website even crashed for awhile due to the spike in traffic.
But here in Canada, Gray says, “[Retailers don’t] discount so heavily so early in the year in Canada that they end up eroding their profit.”
The Conference Board of Canada is predicting a good year for retail, with sales up 2.9 per cent to $89 billion.
