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If you’re stressing about the expenses which come along with the festive season, perhaps tomorrow’s shopping deals will help to ease your stress.
With the current credit crunch affecting the way that consumers spend, tomorrow’s highly anticipated Black Friday specials are sure to lure many shoppers into spending some cash. Black Friday, which originated in the United States on the first Friday after Thanksgiving, has seen tremendous sales growth over the years in South Africa, with the usual one-day special offering unusual savings on products ranging from gadgets to groceries and everything in between.
But what are the origins of this day of shopping?
Well, according to history.com, Black Friday has its origins in the 1950s, when in the city of Philadelphia, police officers could not take the day off after Thanksgiving as chaotic “hordes of suburban shoppers and tourists flooded into the city in advance of the big Army-Navy football game held on that Saturday every year.”
By 1961, the term “Black Friday” was officially used to attribute the yearly chaos which ensued.
By the 80s, retailers nationwide across America decided to reinvent the day by turning it into a positive day of shopping by offering specials on a wider variety of stock.
Today the one-day shopping spree has evolved to a sometimes four-day event all over the world, with Cyber Monday presenting an opportunity for online deals as well.
Before the advent of online shopping which many retailers now offer, shoppers would have had to wait in line patiently before finding their perfect item. Nowadays shopping for deals has become much easier if one is to go the online route.
For South Africans Black Friday is a new concept, having only been introduced in 2014. That’s not to say that it isn’t a welcomed notion, even if it isn’t a homegrown idea.
Some of the confirmed big local retailers which will be participating in the Black Friday offerings include: Checkers, Game, Dis-Chem, HiFi Corporation, Takealot, Samsung, Makro, Clicks, Digicape, Outdoorphoto, Hilti, Bidorbuy, Boardmans, Raru, Spree, Rebeltech, Wootware, Sunglass Hut, Travelstart and Edgars.
Discounted product offerings will make Christmas shopping even more exciting as consumers will be rushing to grab the deals which will be on offer. The discounted offerings will be a much needed and welcomed respite to consumers and their wallets.
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» Rumour had it that the phrase “Black Friday” originated from the practice of selling slaves on the day after Thanksgiving. This was debunked by Snopes.com in 2015;
» In 2011, a woman used pepper spray on fellow shoppers who were waiting in line for discounted Xbox 360s at a Walmart in California. Other shoppers were reported as saying “she was trying to get an advantage”;
» A former college student who worked at Walmart told Business Insider that a fight broke out over a bike. “Fists were thrown and there was some blood. Eventually one guy got ahold of it and managed to get away from the crowd, he rode the bike out of the store to flee his pursuers (without paying),” he said;
» In 2010, a woman was arrested after threatening to shoot other shoppers who tried to object when she pushed into the queue forming outside a Toys R Us store in Madison, Wisconsin;
» In 2008, a 34-year-old employee was trampled to death as a crowd pushed forward into a Walmart in New York;
» In 2012, two people were shot outside a Walmart in Florida, during a dispute over a parking space; and
» In 2013, a Las Vegas man was shot as he tried to wrestle his TV, which he’d just bought, from a robber who had taken the TV at gunpoint.
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