US customers restricted online shopping on Black Friday, back to stores

Black Friday is traditionally one of the biggest shopping days of the year in the United States. It’s the day after Thanksgiving, which is traditionally the pre-Christmas shopping season that begins in America. Expenses on this day are closely watched by analysts and economists as a guide to the further development of retail sales and the economy in general.

This year, retailers have been luring online pre-Christmas shopping since September, as supply chain problems may prevent them from quickly replenishing merchandise by the end of the year. The total revenue from online shopping on Black Friday this year was about $8.9 billion (CZK 201.7 billion). Adobe said that’s less than $9 billion in 2020. Online shopping on Thanksgiving remained unchanged at $5.1 billion last year.

This year, as last year, many merchants closed stone stores for Thanksgiving due to staff shortages and the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Sensormatic Solutions, attendance at stores open for Thanksgiving increased 47.5 percent compared to last year. However, compared to 2019, the period before the pandemic, it has decreased by 28.3 percent.

Many merchants also offer the opportunity to shop online and then pick up purchases from a physical store, which reduces shipping costs. Macy’s, Walmart, Target and Kohl’s, which won on Black Friday, offered a hybrid buy option, Louis Navilier, president of investor firm Navellier & Associates told Reuters.

The name Black Friday appears to have originated in the 1960s, and is purported to describe the traffic problems drivers and police officers faced due to the shopper’s attack. Later, an explanation arose that immediately after Thanksgiving, stores began to turn a profit, so they are “in the black numbers”.

Black Friday is followed by the so-called Cyber ​​Monday. On this day, online retailers offer high discounts.