If you followed my old blog, you know that I go out for black Friday, not to actually do shopping but to see what it’s like. As a marketer, I find it interesting to see how people behave on black Friday. So this year, I braved the cold to see what black Friday was like.
I woke up at 3:30am, not that I was asleep, I ate way too much on Thanksgiving day and I don’t like to sleep with a full stomach. So, I was pretty much awake. I got dressed and went out into the dark of night. It was 11F outside, I was wearing layers of clothing to stay warm, but still my fingers were freezing. It normally isn’t this cold so early in the season, 20-30F maybe but this was unreal. I didn’t look forward to waiting in the cold outside, something I was expecting. There were few cars on the road, but as I neared the mall, I saw more. The parking lot looked half full in some parts and totally empty in others.
I drove up to JC Penney and saw that there were few cars near the main entrance so I parked there. They had opened early, no doubt in compassion for the people who waited to get in who had endured the almost single digit temperatures. They were scheduled to open at 4am and at 3:50am, when I showed up, they were open already. The line for Target was long, not yet open, the line stretched along the side of the building. So I decided I would go to Target after the store opened to see what the crowd was there for.
I entered JC Penney and found it was very easy to get around, no lines, no problems. I picked up a scarf for one of my sisters, knowing that she likes scarves plus it was a good deal. I was surprised at the lack of people in the store. There were only two people in front of me when I went to check out. At that point, I decided to head into the mall to see what was going on.
The mall had half the stores open and few people in any of them. I walked over toward Sears, on my way, I have to pass the food court. The smell of pizza was coming from the food court, I thought, they can’t be serving pizza at this hour could they? I thought perhaps it was just the smell of the pizza place permeating throughout the mall. But no, as I past, it was open and it had a line. It made sense, nobody else was serving food.
Sears was pretty quiet, the sales people were standing around chatting, they didn’t have anyone to help, same at Kohl’s. At Target, I first thought it must be a mad house! The entrance was packed with people. The nice leisurely shopping I had been experience was gone. Bodies slamming into one another, elbows flying and carts being used and passive aggressive battering rams. I thought I had found the madness of black Friday, but no, I had just found poor logistics. What Target had done is put the entertainment, toys and electronics so close to each other and near the entrance that the crowd swarmed that area. Once I passed that area, it was smooth sailing. At this point, I decided to leave the mall.
I headed out to see what the stand alone stores were like. Although the lines on the outside looked long, once they poured into the store, it didn’t look anymore full than your typical Saturday afternoon. So I left for home. Later in the day around 10am, I ventured back out. Again, the crowds looked only slightly more than your typical Saturday at the mall. In fact of the three stores I went to, I only had to wait in line at one, which is actually quite common even on a weekday at that store. The others had no lines.
My black Friday experience was very uneventful. Gone were the craziness of the past, where it seemed almost like a warzone at times. Where you waited in line bored, only to be broken by the sudden rush and chaotic frenzy of the first 1 minute of shopping where the really good deals are taken. Even at Target, where I showed up a half hour after the store opened, the TV’s that were on deep discount, they still had four of them unclaimed. In past years, that was unheard of.
Now that it is Monday and I’ve had a chance to look at the sales figures for last Friday, I have seen that overall, there was an uptick from last year, but nowhere near the levels of pre 2009 levels. In my part of the country, sales were basically flat. There are a number of factors involved in that. Black Friday was an unusually cold day here, 11F at the end of November is unusual and probably kept some people home who preferred to shop online. Also, online retailers were far more aggressive this year and the numbers show a double digit increase in web traffic this year. Add to that, some retailers had pre-Thanksgiving day sales which might have helped thin the crowds at bit. I think we will have an ok holiday season in terms of sales, but consumers are still not opening up their wallets like in the past.
