"BLACK FRIDAY! OVER HYPED OR WHAT"
Hello readers, i don't know if it was just me or was this just passed 2015 Black Friday really over hyped..
Firstly, from 3 months before the due date, you cannot browse through popular websites without catching a glimpse of adverts from popular on line eCommerce sites such as Jumia, Konga, Kaymu, Ali Expresss, Yudala......... most promising as much as 50% price slash, infact it was so praised, that it made last years Black Friday look like childs play. I give kudos for the innovation, as i too gained from it with the purchase of a new fone 20% off the actual price.
So how did it all start, according to Wikipedia, its a day after Thanksgiving day. It has been regarded as the beginning of the Christmas shopping season in the US, and most major retailers open very early (and more recently during overnight hours) and offer promotional sales. Black Friday is not an official holiday, but California and some other states observe "The Day After Thanksgiving" as a holiday for state government employees, sometimes in lieu of another federal holiday. It has routinely been the busiest shopping day of the year since 2005.
The earliest evidence of the phrase Black Friday applied to the day after Thanksgiving in a shopping context suggests that the term originated in Philadelphia, where it was used to describe the heavy and disruptive pedestrian and vehicle traffic that would occur on the day after Thanksgiving. This usage dates to at least 1961. More than twenty years later, as the phrase became more widespread, a popular explanation became that this day represented the point in the year when retailers begin to turn a profit, thus going from being "in the red" to being "in the black"
The news media have long described the day after Thanksgiving as the busiest shopping day of the year. Also, Black Friday is a shopping day for a combination of reasons. As the first day after the last major holiday before Christmas, it marks the unofficial beginning of the Christmas shopping season.
Lest i forget, we have the Cyber Monday, ie the Monday preceding Black Friday and it is based on a trend that retailers began to recognize in 2003 and 2004. Retailers noticed that many consumers, who were too busy to shop over the Thanksgiving weekend or did not find what they were looking for, shopped for bargains online that Monday from home or work. It was invented in 2005 by the National Retail Federation's division Shop.org,
Also, there is the Cyber Week, as reported in the Forbes "Entrepreneurs" column on December 3, 2013: "Cyber Monday, the online counterpart to Black Friday, has been gaining unprecedented popularity—to the point where Cyber Sales are continuing on throughout the week.
In Nigeria, the Black Friday was over-advertised and given enormous boost; people had so many expectations, only to see a normal day sales with an average price slash. they were complaints from early customers who shopped online as early as 12am on that Friday, only for their selected items not to be delivered till this day..GOSH! i pray we get there in due time.
I strongly believe innovations like this are welcomed as they among other things will usher us into the 21st century proper.
