Thanksgiving isn't just for turkey anymore. It's become the new "Black Friday", the day all the shop-aholics rush out to stores before the break of dawn to get "bargains" that they can most likely get later in the Christmas shopping season anyway if they simply wait until merchants lower prices in response to competition and consumer spending.In the past few years some merchants have been opening and posting the same Black Friday sales prices on Thanksgiving.
It's seemed to have boosted sl sales enough for those brave sellers that the herd of retailers (which herd is more mindless, the compulsive sale shopper or the retail seller who will sell motherhood, apple pie, Thanksgiving day, football games and even the turkey... if the shoppers are willing to leave the dinner table for the mall). This wide expansion of Thanksgiving day "sales" this year is an experiment by many more retailers to see how we will behave and to see how far from Christmas they can sell their goods. It seems the distance from the opening day for Christmas shopping is getting wider.
Sellers think they can make more sales this way and the buyers are convinced they are saving more money. They both can't be right. But anyone who has ever observed the frenzy of a big sale day in a store knows that rationality isn't much of a consideration in when to buy or sell. Because the economy is so bad, the retailers think they have to induce the consumers any way possible. but is dragging them from their Thanksgiving meal and social gathering the best way to do it? Hmmm Well, if Aunt Mabel brings her inedible green bean casserole to the feast it might....
Besides opening the malls and stores on thanksgiving day, this year retailers are also making these pre Black Friday sale changes.
* Offering the same Thanksgiving day sales that are in stores as on line specials too
* Pricing (in store only) some items so low that it's "too good to pass up" in order to entice the shopper to buy other, more price inflated, goodies
* Handing out gifts at the stores
* On Thanksgiving day, matching any price of a competitor
Even if this does work and mobs show up on Thursday, what happens on Black Friday? I think the fools who rushed in on Thanksgiving day and did their shopping at that time will not return the next day to spend even more. In the end, total sales will be about equal...and Aunt Mabel will have to take her awful green bean casserole home and eat it herself.
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