Black Friday a success for some, forgettable for others

Stores like local Wal-Mart and Meijer’s opened their doors Thursday night for customers to browse the sales. Some areas started with sales on less valuable items at 10 p.m., while leaving the more expensive things for the usual Friday morning rush. Store visits were up by 3.5 percent this year, increasing to 247 million. Even though the traffic went up, actual sales went down, decreasing 1.8% to $59.1 billion, according to csmonitor.com. For many stores, the sales decreased, as indicated by that number. But this year, Wal-Mart reported its biggest year ever.

The two numbers, one increasing and decreasing, don’t seem to add up. It is easy to believe that they would correlate with each other, meaning if one goes up, the other must follow. However, sales forecasters and economists have said that the decrease in sales on Friday is because of the number of stores that opened up on Thursday night. What was once only known as Black Friday may soon turn into a whole “Black Weekend” if stores keep opening their doors earlier and earlier.

As is usual on Black Friday, the videos that surface on Saturday can be seen just about everywhere, from TV to Internet. The sometimes funny, but occasionally sad videos occur because of the mobs of people who wanted a limited number of items. Along with these videos come the thoughts of the news reporters and the video comments online, telling readers exactly how the country feels about Black Friday.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   In addition to Black Friday, comes Cyber Monday. As online shoppers prepare Sunday at 11:59 p.m., online stores do not have to worry about masses of people, fights or chaos. Nevertheless, there still is only a limited number of products, and some shoppers will leave upset. It is reported that this year’s Cyber Monday has been the biggest on record, up almost 26% from previous years and with sales topping the $1.5 billion mark, according to csmonitor.com.

By Colin Brenner

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