Retail therapy: US reels after extended weekend of shopping

It was a little past midnight. A young Indian woman was towing away a baby stroller that was stacked with electronic goods way beyond her height when we walked towards the mall on `Black Friday’, the intervening night of 22-23 November. Inside this mall in New Jersey, bleary-eyed shoppers were in a frenzy, seduced by the magical word - ‘OFF’ - preceded by 40 per cent, 50 per cent and even 75 per cent in some cases.

We weren’t the only ones. According to the National Retail Federation (NRF), some 35 million Americans stayed the night out on Black Friday, up from just 6 million last year. Not surprising if you go by Google Trends, which reports that people started searching online for ‘Black Friday’ on 14 October, a good 40 days before D-day.

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‘Black Friday’ - for those not familiar - is the night when America shops till it is way beyond dawn. Till noon, technically. It is the night following Thanksgiving when shopping malls all over the US offer exciting discounts that only an American who treasures his sleep more than his wallet would ignore. In fact, shoppers postpone their purchases till this night to be able to stretch that credit card just a little more. Plastic buys more on Black Friday than at any other time.

The dark-sounding name ‘Black Friday’alludes to this period, which marks the start of the Christmas shopping season, when people’s account books are no longer in the red but turn ‘black’. There are other explanations for the etymology of the term ‘Black Friday’. There’s a story from the 1960s - that the Philadelphia police called the Friday after Thanksgiving ‘Black Friday’ since it caused huge traffic jams in the city.

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Little has changed since the Swinging Sixties. The scene outside stores in just about every town and city in the US on Black Friday resembled an army of people ready with gunpowder - both cash and credit - to attack. At the mall I visited, even at 4 am, a serpentine queue had formed outside the store of a popular cosmetics store that had decided to delay its opening. At Macy’s in New York, the largest store in town, some 11,000 shoppers reportedly braved the November chill, waiting for the doors to open.

Black Friday also has a history of unleashing its darker side. Four years ago, a Walmart employee in a store in New York was killed in a stampede that ensued. This year too, incidents of violence were reported from Florida, Michigan and Kentucky and cases of cashiers passing out from sheer exhaustion are routine.

Realising the human greed for a good deal, Black Friday is no longer a post-Cinderalla hour event. For the last few years, it has extended to Saturday in the form of ‘Small Business Saturday’. Since smaller players cannot compete with the big daddies of American retail like Macy’s, Kohl’s, Walmart on Black Friday, they choose Saturday to offer great deals to attract those who still have purchasing power and energy left after the late night-early morning madness.

And if you thought the weekend would round off the wave of consumerism and US would be back to work on Monday, you got it wrong. Monday was ‘Cyber Monday’, when Americans logged on to their laptops and smartphones to indulge in online shopping to get the last of the best deals. Cyber Monday is ideal for those who prefer virtual shopping to real life retail therapy. A dedicated website cybermonday2012.comactually gives out details of everything that is still on offer. From phones to kitchen appliances to footwear to television sets, American homes have been swamped by cartons this weekend.

And the proof of the pudding is in the figures. Pricegrabber.comhas reported a 17 per [caption id=“attachment_535152” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  US President Barack Obama shops at a small business with his daughters Sasha and Malia. Getty Images.[/caption]cent increase over the Cyber Monday of last year. The NRF estimates the average shopper spent $423 over the weekend, up from $398 last year. Total spending was over $59 billion during the marketing blitz-powered weekend.

The shopping bug bit the First Citizen as well. President Barack Obama avoided the Black Friday chaos, but Saturday saw him visiting a bookstore in Virginia with his daughters to pick up 15 children’s books. This was Obama’s way of promoting the smaller enterprise of the mom-and-pop variety.

With Obama’s handling of the economy having been the main issue in Presidential elections that got over this month, the adrenalin rush over the weekend would surely tempt his administration to think it is a sure sign the American economy is getting better.