Who does not love holidays?
We absolutely adore them more when we gather with family and friends to celebrate them.
Add Turkey, Mashed potatoes and Stuffing and you get yourself a thanksgiving blast.
Unlike other holidays, thanksgiving started as a day of giving thanks and sacrifice for the blessing of the harvest and of the preceding year.
Now it has turned into a bit of sensation due to its popularity in many parts of the world and due to its association with Black Friday.
What is Black Friday?
Black Friday is an informal name for the Friday following Thanksgiving Day in the United States, which is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November.
As its name suggests, history of Black Friday is quite dark.
Black Friday was a term to describe the chaos that ensued on the day after Thanksgiving, when hordes of suburban shoppers and tourists flooded into the city in advance of the big Army-Navy football game held on that Saturday every year.
It has routinely been the busiest shopping day of the year in the United States since 2005.
Since it has so much history and significance for business, merchants and boosters tried unsuccessfully to change it to “Big Friday” in order to remove the negative connotations.
Black Friday constitutes rise of consumerism at its best during holidays.
We have all been there; discount deals which encourage us to purchase things we don’t really need, numerous attractive advertisements which influences our choices and whole occasion drives our mentality to just buy things off because it’s the holiday season.
People are crazy about Black Friday for the amazing offers.
Walmart’s Black Friday
Walmart is among few of such retailers which is still preferred for online transactions with respect to other leading companies.
Only previous year 25% of the people claimed Walmart would have the best deals for Black Friday.
That can be understood due to the long history of Walmart’s deals on Black Friday.
In fact, 30 years ago, in 1989, Walmart became the first retailer in history to report after-tax profits of $1 billion.
There have been some ups and downs to this festival due to its sheer popularity and craze.
Only in November 25, 2011, Walmart’s website crippled and the login page stopped working, causing many to lose out on what probably felt to them like deals of a lifetime.
Furthermore, extent of damage on Walmart’s Black Friday has its fair bit of history when recalling the numerous incidents, along with a woman who was almost crushed to death at a Mesquite Walmart, and a man was shot by armed robbers outside its Northern California location.
Walmart’s Black Friday has seen this trend of maniacal, bloodthirsty frenzied madness only since this past decade.
Walmart has become epicenter of this madness and full on fist fights break out over appliances and video game consoles.
Previously, Black Fridays were more civilized, with Walmart even treating its early bird shoppers to poinsettias, free coffee and doughnuts, as well as electronics giveaways and Friday morning specials.
One of the key factors for that change might be due to Walmart not opening on Thanksgiving Day until 2011.
Unlike nowadays when people camp out days or even a week before, they used to form lines just before 7 am so they weren’t sleep deprived while doing their holiday shopping creating a stress free and safe atmosphere for shopping.
If we look at this from customers perspective, they view Walmart’s Black Friday as once in lifetime opportunity to pounce at amazing deals and perceive it as win-win situation.
While this logic fits quite well in the time and situation, but this reasoning has leaded to random buying of goods and products with any discount deals without any concern for its requirement.
Some of them may remove unwanted and randomly collected products back.
Either way, this results in further competition to pick up merchandise before they run out and the situation becomes uncontrollable and haphazard.
E-commerce has certainly changed the commercial transactions and trend of obtaining extra edge over the other retailers.
Walmart has certainly implemented e-commerce and new technology to aid in its commercial success. Like blockchain technology which has been used to mitigate transaction fees to zero.
Walmart’s Black Friday has embraced this new technology to gain edge over Amazon and stocked DVDs, pajamas, and other items customers prefer to pick up in stores. This has resulted in buying of more than 75% of most popular toys in 2018 beating Amazon.
In retrospect, this might be good for the business in one hand but in the other hand retailers are less likely to build new stores. That hurts commercial real estate, neighborhood shopping centers, and jobs.
However, the market will determine what’s best for Walmart.
In 2019, iPhone 11 series $300 deal has become Walmart’s main attraction.
Now, situation like this trigger crazy responses from the customers including additional sales on their products.
Furthermore, this buzz creates automatic advertisements without any additional revenue for the Black Friday.
Additionally, Walmart will deliver close to best-of-class deals on all major smartphones, games consoles and both premium and budget TV options which should see it standout during Black Friday 2019.
Adding up, all this use of competitive edge principles and scarcity principle, Walmart has prepared for Black Friday with plenty of stocks composed of everything. Its strength being the stocks and commodities in overall, of everything.
That’s why, they say little more preparation is always better.
