Have you ever heard about Black Friday? Most of you certainly have. But do you know where this recurrence comes from? This is an American tradition related to the day after Thanksgiving which spread out all over the world few years ago. It has become a trend adopted by many companies attracting customers with incredible discounts and offers. Black Friday weekend is important for both stores and online retailers, the sales amount is around 15% of the holiday season sales (November-December) which is estimated to be around $962 billion for 2017.
As far as the online shopping is concerned, Amazon has a monopoly with huge discounts on different products, from electronic to cosmetic, starting days before Friday and involving the entire weekend. Last year Amazon achieved a record selling 12 products every second and an overall sale of 1,1 million products in a single day. However, this is year Amazon Italia will have to face a challenge: on Black Friday the Amazon employees of the Castel San Giovanni warehouse are going to strike to obtain better economic benefits. This might cause a slowdown in the deliveries even though Amazon has guaranteed its effectiveness.
From a research of the Statistics Brain, in 2015 the amount of online spending was around $2,932,000,000, incomparable with the in-store spending which amounted at $67,560,000,000. This proves that, despite the incredible improvement of online shopping, people still prefer to get in stores and touch the products they are acquiring.
Courtesy of Amazon
The offers involve a lot of sectors. You can make great deals on electronic devices, especially on TVs, and on toys. Despite all, if you are looking for catching the best promotion for a product, you need to keep an eye on the different platforms in which it is sold. For example, if you are interest in buying an older model IPhone you can buy it at greater discount on Walmart.com rather than on Apple.com or Apple stores.
On fashion companies, there are booster deals, especially on malls rather than on direct brand boutiques. The only concern is that you need to be fast, as the products involved in the affairs generally are soon sold out.
In 2015, John Lewis, the Oxford street store rang up £187.7m in the Black Friday week.
Courtesy of The Guardian
The Black Friday and the Thanksgiving affect also the stock market. As these days are known to be very profitable particularly for Amazon, Walmart and other large companies with acquirable stocks, then a clever investor will certainly take the opportunity to invest with high profit expectations.
In Italy, the Black Friday is still a novelty, whose sales power has really started last year. On Friday, we are expecting great bargains and discount out of 70%, especially for Amazon and Mediaworld. But do not forget to save money for the 27th of November, the Cyber Monday with other great deals is waiting all of us.
by Beatrice Bolis
