Black Friday Spurs Economy

Consumers await Black Friday months in advance and make plans to be at the head of the crowd at their favorite department store. Some stores open their doors at midnight, others at 6:00 am. For shoppers, it is an opportunity to cash in on the biggest bargains of the year. But for retailers, it is an indication of what’s happening in the market and a forecast of the state of Christmas sales for the season.

The verdict for this year is not yet in across the globe but indications are that this past Black Friday showed positive signs of an economy on the mend. Sales online the day after Thanksgiving surged 22 percent from a year earlier as U.S. consumers, buoyed by higher employment and lower gasoline prices, flocked to computers and smartphones to seek bargains.

Online shopping has become more and more popular and this year many buyers opted to stay in the warmth of their home and let their fingers do the shopping. Sales at EBay Inc. (EBAY) rose 27 percent on Black Friday over last year, and Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) saw a 24 percent increase.

United Kingdom

The picture was not as rosy in the United Kingdom, however, where despite months of planning for Black Friday, chaos reigned in the shops and retainers are questioning whether the efforts were worth the trouble. Crowds gathered early at the doors of many department stores and surged inside at an uncontrollable pace and store workers were unable to deal with the masses. In addition, online sales struggled under the load.

Some analysts in the UK fear that these deep discounts at the end of November on Black Friday will unleash a torrent of markdowns over the remaining weeks up to Christmas.

In the U.S. economists reported that Black Friday online sales rose 9.5 percent and mobile sales jumped 25 percent. For Thanksgiving, mobile sales on smartphones and tablets accounted for 52 percent of online traffic. In the U.S. surprisingly, this year, more shopping was done in Thanksgiving Day than on Black Friday slipping to 46 percent from last year to 49 percent.