What Time On Thursday Should I Get In Line For Black Friday

What is Black Friday?

Suposedly,Historically a certain type of retail establishments--the kind you'd find at malls, were "in the red" until basically Thanksgiving.  Meaning they made all their profit at Christmas, and the first 11 months of the year were just covering the year's expenses.  In other words, in a very simple business (the kind they largely had before computers), if you had a low 9% markup on all goods, after 11 months you'd be up to 100%, and the 12th month would be gravy.  Of course that was probably normalized over the year, but it's a neat metaphor, and one politicians still use every year when they say "you have to work 'til March 19th (or whatever) just to pay taxes!"Okay, so if November 29th is organically the first day of profit, it's illogically the first day of Christmas shopping.  But it's early enough that you can't call it Christmas, and you want to start Christmas off with a bang, and there's "really no harm in extended our red another 6 hours..."  So a lot of stores have massive sales the day after Thanksgiving.  The sales last all day, but are large enough that there's a slippery slope to people camping out a day in advance, or stores opening earlier and earlier (many stores open at midnight, most at 6am); and in true American one-upsmanship stores have massive loss leaders with tiny inventories.  They'll commonly advertise $150 laptops (that normally cost $650), and the store will literally take a $500 loss in opportunity cost just to buy a customer and for the advertising.  But that's only really possible for, say, 10 laptops per store...Behold, an ad I got in the email yesterday:70% off plus another 30% plus 15% plus 15% (multiplied out, not added), leaves a 99.5% discount, as long as you get there, get in "line," be at the front of the line when they open at midnight, and grab the right stuff before it's all gone.  Still, 99.5% off expensive dress shoes!  If you're at all an extrovert, if you at all like a deal, if you at all love parties and don't hate crowds, this is The Burning Man of Capitalism.  (I just coined that, but I hereby ©opyright it because it's so awesome, yo.)Again, slippery slope plus crowds plus one-upsmanship plus America! and you end up with Alecia Li Morgan's answer to What are some crazy/terrifying Black Friday experiences you have had?

What are some tips for Black Friday shopping?

A real way to save money is not to attend this nonsense at all.Do you have any real demand, you should buy it ASAP.But as a retail employee myself, I think it’s strange that people - clever, educated persons - fall for this campaign. No store, no company has to lose or even throw away money. It’s the same weird thinking of “Facebook is free” - Yo, that’s why they make hundreds of millions of Dollars. Or Wikipedia needs donations? No, they do not, but they pay high wages to unneeded staff. So, be careful at those “offers”.Of course, they might be cheaper than usual, but if you lived with those items before easily, why would you need it now? When I stayed at my parent’s home for coffee, suddenly they were both very excited about a fryer that uses no oil (sorry, “Heißluftfriteuse” didn’t get me any answer in my dictionaries). But they did not plan to spend that money now after the car needed a set of new tyres. So I stepped in, asked how much french fries they eat to justify the purchase. They declined. No special offer is worth it if you have no demand. But those big prize tags are there to make you think you have a demand; to create desire.We got this taught in vocational business school to use it as an easy tool to make people buy more within a short amount of time to add some “urgency” and impulsive shopping (stuff at the checkout - the line will shove you away from those items, so you better buy it; stuff in the escalators if it’s a multi-story store - you move slowy along and eventually away from it. You better grab it!).There is a very high chance people return perfectly fine items because of no real need after those times. So save yourself the hassle and: Don’t participate in that nonsense.

Do retailers make more on Black Friday or Cyber Monday?

According to our Holiday Season E-commerce Report, Black Friday is coming slightly ahead of Cyber Monday when it comes to a bigger number of visits.In the report, we analysed the performance of 1,400 firms which had been using LiveChat help desk software and chose only e-commerce companies that recorded min. 30 chats with customers. In general, we found out that websites got over 63,3% more visits during a shopping season.And when it comes to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, these differences are even bigger. The gathered data showed that the number of visits on Black Friday increased over 120,4% and on Cyber Monday it amounted to 104,3%. It means that Black Friday offers better chances of boosting sales.Conversely, we observed that the number of chats started to increase at the beginning of November and achieved the highest number on Cyber Monday - 80% more chats.However, the increase in visits may not lead to higher revenue if clients are left alone. Therefore, companies that want to get most of the shopping season should prepare well to offer efficient customer service.Firms included in our research had more than 50% more agents who handled chats on Black Friday and 77,5% more on Cyber Monday.They undertook these actions not only to deal with a bigger number of visitors, but also to shorten the time of queues and maintain high satisfaction rates.You can find more information about the issue in our report.