Margaret Hartmann at New York Magazine postulates that Black Friday is morphing into Black Weekend:
According to the research firm ShopperTrak, sales on Friday were down 1.8 percent from last year, which is the first dip since the recession hit in 2008. However, that still amounts to a staggering $11.2 billion in sales, and the drop wasn’t caused by Americans reeling in their spending. With retailers starting sales on Thanksgiving this year and extending deals through so-called Cyber Monday, the busiest shopping day of the year has been split into many pieces, and like a consumerism-crazed starfish, it’s now poised to respawn into a multi-day event.
I agree with her observation with one slight caveat. Black Friday is not only extending from Friday through Cyber Monday, but it is also spilling forward onto Thanksgiving Thursday and into the preceding Wednesday too. In other words, the shopping spree is going to start at around 5 pm the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and continue right on through Cyber Monday.
That’s an awfully long time to have a “1-day” sale. And since a LOT of tech gear is sold during that period of time and since a lot of the buying is now being done online, this developing phenomenon is well worth watching.