The day after American Thanksgiving is perhaps the biggest retail day of the year. It kicks off the holiday retail season in the United States. Many retailers offer swanky deals and stay open for longer hours in order to draw large crowds of shoppers. This has worked not only to draw in American shoppers, but also Canadians hoping to take advantage of these deals. Needless to say, this has caused some problems, as Canadians are spending money in the US and not in Canadian stores. For the first time, Canadian stores participated in Black Friday in an attempt to deter cross border shopping and shoppers going on shopping “holidays” into the United States. With the mall being a two minutes walk from our campus, it was hard to ignore either the shopping bags floating around campus or the whispers of students sharing where they heard the best sales were on, or even wondering what was left on sale. You may have even noticed attendance in class may have suffered more than usual on a Friday. Even if you are not an Economics or Business student, one cannot help but think this was a smart move for Canadian retailers.
The Global and Mail reports that the United States sales topped $59.1-billion (U.S.), up $52.5 from the same day last year. It makes one wonder what portion of that is Canadian spending and what affect it would have here. Many estimates predict that Black Friday could pass Boxing Day as the more profitable and popular shopping day of the year, as people would prefer to take advantage of spending less on Christmas presents than score deals on over stocked Christmas sales items. The problem with the Canadian version of this shop-a-polusa is that Friday is a normal workday and not a holiday, so even if the sales are stretched out over the weekend, some consumers may prefer to do the bulk of their shopping online. By doing this, they avoid the packed stores or the possible life threatening situations that have occurred by overjealous shoppers in the States. Every year reports come in of people hurt and even in major cases death incidents. Different retailers have had employees trampled and shoppers injured. In some extreme cases, shoppers have pulled guns on each other over who claimed an item first. This year, there were numerous parking and line disputes that were reported. As a matter of fact, online shopping reached a new milestone this year. A record 89-million Americans shopped online or in stores over the weekend, up from 86 million last year. It was online shopping which pushed this growth as shoppers did over 40 percent of their shopping online, which boosted online shopping up 20.7 percent. Online shopping netted a billion dollars for retailers, while Cyber Monday doubled that. However, despite the attempts at stopping the cross border shopping, Bloomberg estimates Canadian retailers still lose approximately $5 billion in sales to American retailers.
Black Friday in Brazil
With the States being a stone’s throw away from Canada, it makes sense that we would eagerly cross the border and spend our hard earned money there. Especially with the Canadian dollar so strong and similar merchandise in America already set at comparably lower prices; the discounts just make the trip even more worthwhile. It seems that as long as the original price discrepancies exist, Black Friday in Canada might never truly catch on, particularly with the ability to purchase online at American prices from the comfort of one’s home. Black Friday has begun to reach out into Europe as well. The United Kingdom alone is believed to account for a little over a percent of the online shopping over the four day period. Brazil also reports that this year saw an increase in sales as many retail stores offered similar discounts. As the popularity of Black Friday increases around the world, sales will continue to increase as new markets are tapped. This will continue to help the weak American economy and as one of our biggest trading partners, Canadians should not be too bothered by some Canadian dollars being spent in America.
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http://www.digitaltrends.com/b…