Black Friday is a day in the United States that has become famous worldwide since the 1960s for its unbridled pre-Christmas shopping, and the day after Thanksgiving Day.
Why is it "black"?
According to some people, the expression Black Friday was born in Philadelphia and refers to traffic on the roads and congestion in shops, which would make the air "black".
Another theory would instead refer to records on traders' books, which traditionally changed from red (losses) to black (guadagni). The Black Friday would indicate a day of great earnings for business activities. Thousands of Americans are attracted by discounts, valid only on that day and even up to 80%.
The big chains offer exceptional promotions on this occasion. For this reason, many people who shop on Black Friday often spend the night out of the store waiting for the next day's shop doors to open and grab the best discount.
In 2013, more than eighty million people spent USDÂ 57.4Â billion in the United States in a single day: to provide a comparison it is as if the entire population of Germany had gone shopping on the same day.
Black Friday is seen by several financial analysts as an indicator that concerns the propensity to consume and spend in the United States and that will also provide a projection of how much the population will spend in view of Christmas shopping. It can therefore be used as a parameter to estimate the trend of the entire Christmas season. Black Friday is so important that some big chains anticipate their sales even on Thanksgiving Day.
Black Friday is usually followed by Cyber Monday, the first following Monday, characterized by big discounts for electronic products: it is an e-commerce response to Black Friday and is characterized by a massive offer of discounts exclusively online.
In Italy, the phenomenon is almost exclusively limited to web promotions, as there is no Thanksgiving Day that kicks off this custom and there are far fewer subscriptions to the other European digital markets.