According to Barbara Kahn, a marketing expert at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Black Friday used to be a typical scenario, complete with lines encircling department shops, fighting over merchandise, and crowds so big they streamed out of retailers’ front doors. However, the definition of the shopping event has evolved dramatically in recent years. Running into stores before dawn to take advantage of 24-hour doorbuster offers is no longer an option. Due to competition from Cyber Monday, Black Friday sales have mostly moved online, begun earlier, and lasted longer. Some even claim that Black November, the more general name experts use to characterize the month-long sales coming up to Thanksgiving weekend, has supplanted Black Friday.
According to Kahn, “Black Friday used to be a trigger for people to go to the store.” But Black Friday itself lost its allure—its sense of urgency—when it changed into a wider promotional season.
This year, Black Friday is on Friday, November 29. I talked to experts about its history and mapped out how it has evolved from its origins to help you understand how it become the largest shopping day in the United States. Experts also discussed how the sale gained its name and their projections for Black Friday in 2024.
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Looking back on Black Fridays of years past
There were indications that Black Friday was evolving from a primarily in-store event to an online buying frenzy prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. According to the National Retail Federation (NRF), Black Friday overtook Cyber Monday as the busiest day for online shopping in 2019. In 2020, additional conditions prompted companies to reimagine their standard Black Friday offers by encouraging internet buying and turning days-long bargains into savings celebrations that lasted for months. Retailers benefited from their efforts: according to the NRF, the number of online Black Friday buyers surpassed 100 million in 2020, a first for the company. Since then, retailers have used similar tactics for Black Friday, which has led to similar tendencies.
According to the NRF, Black Friday has seen a higher overall number of online buyers than Cyber Monday every year since 2019. However, according to Adobe, Americans have typically spent more money on Cyber Monday than Black Friday. According to Dr. Ross Steinman, a professor of consumer psychology at Widener University, this might be the result of advertisements on shops’ websites telling customers that Cyber Monday is their final opportunity to take advantage of sales. There are even clocks on certain websites that show how many seconds it will be till Cyber Monday is done. “Retailers add a gamification element to their sales and make shoppers more competitive when deal hunting by creating pressure to check out before midnight,” Steinman explains.
Beyond internet purchasing, Black Friday as we know it is changed by early shopping. There may be less of a bump in sales on Black Friday itself if individuals have plenty of time to spread out their purchases thanks to discounts offered before the occasion. Adobe reports that Black Friday 2021 was the first time revenue growth reversed itself, with sales totaling $8.9 billion year over year, down from $9 billion in 2020.
Experts started keeping a careful eye on the effects of early offers after Black Friday in 2021. Given Amazon’s inaugural October Prime Day event, which has since grown to be a mainstay of the retailer’s sales calendar, this was particularly crucial. About a month before to Black Friday, it effectively starts the holiday shopping season and prompts other shops to host matching sales events. Adobe projects that Black Friday sales will reach approximately $9.12 billion in 2022 and $9.8 billion in 2023, despite a now-prolonged period of early offers.
Positive Black Friday performance in recent years can be attributed in part to consumer demand. 200.4 million Americans shopped in stores and online over the five days between Thanksgiving Day and Cyber Monday in 2023, the most since the NRF began collecting this statistics in 2017. Due to in-store and online goods, plenty of time to peruse sales, and a general desire for savings chances as economic concerns like inflation loom, people are more motivated to purchase on Black Friday and Cyber Monday than ever before, according to Steinman.
What to expect during Black Friday 2024
Black Friday 2024 is not expected to bring anything unusual, according to experts. As in previous years, discounts began weeks in advance, and experts are certain that internet sales will predominate from Thanksgiving until Cyber Monday. However, according to Katherine Cullen, vice president of industry and consumer research at the National Retail Federation, Black Friday is the day that consumers will visit stores in person.
The demand from customers for Black Friday and Cyber Monday discounts is still high this year. “People are savvy about saving so they can cross their needs and wants off wishlists because they are hungry for deals after years of consistent inflation,” Steinman adds. As long as shops provide competitive prices, Adobe anticipates that during the 2024 holiday shopping season, consumers would spend more on more expensive things like electronics, appliances, and sporting goods.
Nevertheless, sales over the holiday season are expected to rise gradually in 2024. Between $979.5 billion and $989 billion will be spent on holidays in November and December, according to the NRF’s projection, which represents a 2.5% to 3.5% rise over 2023.
How Black Friday became Black November
According to Cullen, the winter holiday shopping season used to start on Black Friday and end on December 24, the day before Christmas. However, this retail calendar is becoming outdated because many companies now offer offers more than a month before Black Friday.
In contrast to Cyber Monday and Amazon Prime Day, Black Friday began as a social, in-person shopping event. It takes place on the Friday following Thanksgiving, which is a paid holiday for most workers. Retailers started cutting prices on items to entice groups into their businesses because people were at home, providing a shared pastime for friends and family. According to Kahn, deals had to be compelling enough to make people get out of bed, run to the store, and possibly stand in line for a while.
In the past, retailers would vie with one another to open as early as possible on Black Friday, and some would even let customers into their establishments on Thanksgiving. According to Kahn, everyone wanted to take part in the rat race to see who could persuade customers to rush to their stores earliest. This transformed Black Friday into a five-day shopping weekend beginning on Thanksgiving and ending on Cyber Monday. Now, because so much shopping happens online during that period, experts named it the Cyber Five. But as these five days expanded into a week and then multiple weeks, experts dubbed all of November Black November.
Thanksgiving weekend used to be the start of the shopping season, but now we look at it as more of a halfway point, says Cullen. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are hallmark events that have a very important place both for consumers and retailers, but within a broader context of a longer shopping season.
Why do Black Friday sales start so early?
Starting Black Friday sales early is a response to recent consumer behavior trends, says Cullen. Retailers adjusted their schedules accordingly after seeing a strong increase in early holiday shopping, a trend NRF surveys have supported. In fact, half or over half of shoppers surveyed said they took advantage of early sales before Thanksgiving for years now, says Cullen. Doing so lets them spread out their spending over multiple weeks to avoid lumpy spending, or concentrated purchases during the holidays with subsequent massive bills, says Steinman.
Because Black Friday and Cyber Monday are now spread out over five days or the entire month of November in some cases retailers have to format their sales strategically to maintain shoppers interest. To do so, some promote deals on different product categories during specific days or weeks instead of offering blanket storewide sales throughout the month, says Cullen.
Is in-store Black Friday shopping dead?
No, in-person Black Friday shopping isn t dead. It s still the most popular day for in-store shopping over the Thanksgiving weekend, and 76.2 million people participated during Black Friday 2023, according to the NRF.
But due to more shoppers taking advantage of online sales, it s no longer what defines the holiday. Now, the main segment of shoppers who visit stores in person on Black Friday are those steeped in tradition, says Steinman. They see Black Friday from an experiential lens, want to spend time with loved ones while browsing deals and are reluctant to give up that yearly outing together.
How Black Friday impacts the holiday shopping season
While Black Friday and Cyber Monday are intertwined with the larger holiday shopping season, they re not dependent on one another, says Cullen. For example, when the NRF surveyed shoppers about how much they spent on holiday-related items during Thanksgiving weekend in 2023, it was down slightly from 2022 ($325.44 in2022and $321.41 in2023). But sales during the overall holiday shopping season which the NRF defines as the period from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31 grew 3.9% year-over year.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday also impact the retail calendar worldwide. Americans associate Black Friday and Cyber Monday with Thanksgiving, but over 20 countries, including the United Kingdom, Italy, Sweden and Mexico, host similar sales, some using the same name despite not celebrating Thanksgiving.
All Black Friday shopping events worldwide also take place on the same day for example, retailers in Canada host Black Friday sales on the same day that they take place in the U.S. despite the country recognizing the second Monday in October as its Thanksgiving holiday. This speaks to Black Friday s legacy and weight: doorbuster deals and a social shopping experience made for the holiday season, says Kahn.
Why is Black Friday called Black Friday?
The term Black Friday originally had no connection to shopping, saysNancy Koehn, a historian and professor at the Harvard Business School. It described a financial panic in 1869 that resulted from investors Jay Gould and Jim Fisk driving up gold prices and ultimately causing the market to crash. Since its 19th century inception, the term Black Friday has generally been used to describe other bad events or negative situations, like workers not showing up to their jobs the day after Thanksgiving, Koehn says.
The first time Black Friday specifically referred to shopping the day after Thanksgiving was in the 1950s. Police in Philadelphia complained about an influx of people coming to the city to shop the day after Thanksgiving, calling it a Black Friday because they had to control crowds. From there, the term was used to describe shopping on that day and gained momentum with each passing year.
Originally, retailers were upset about the name Black Friday because the term had a negative connotation, Koehn says. Efforts arose to call it Big Friday instead, but they ultimately failed. Retailers then changed the narrative and decided that Black Friday is when they re supposed to be in the black, a financial phrase describing the profitability and prosperity of a business, in contrast to being in the red, or in a deficit.
Koehn says the idea of positioning Black Friday as a shopping holiday galloped forward between the 1970s and 1980s, which she attributes to retailers instigating competition among themselves and expanding the deals they offered.
Overall, there was no defining moment that made us call Black Friday Black Friday, says Koehn. It s really the evolution of language and definition, retail practices and consumers responding to that.
Meet our experts
At NBC Select, we work with experts with specialized knowledge and authority based on relevant training and/or experience. We also ensure that all expert advice and recommendations are made independently and with no undisclosed financial conflicts of interest.
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Barbara Kahn
is a professor of marketing at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
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Katherine Cullen
is the vice president of industry and consumer insights at the National Retail Federation.
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Nancy Koehn
is a historian and professor at the Harvard Business School.
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Dr.
Ross Steinman
is a professor of consumer psychology at Widener University.
Why trust NBC Select?
I m areporterat NBC Select who has covered tentpole sales like Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Amazon Prime Day since 2020. For this article, I researched the history of Black Friday, spoke to four experts and referred to data from sources like the NRF and Adobe Analytics.
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