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Camping outside Wal-Mart at midnight to get a new HD TV for half price. This may seem like a waste of time and valuable sleep hours but many people every year will forgo their sleep and spend a few hours in the cold waiting to save a little cash on Christmas gifts. I would argue that people are undervaluing their own health and over valuing the items on sale.
According to “New research reveals the reasons we shop on Black Friday” on the Washington Post, “152 million people will shop between Friday and Sunday after Thanksgiving, up from the 138 million last year. That means nearly half of Americans will lose sleep.” Interestingly the people shopping are typically women as the article says “The only time men were present, they were sort of just tagging along.”
About the large crowds and why people are willing to endure them, the article explains that “Ordinarily, Byun said, shoppers are turned off by crowds. But when crowds create a sense of competition — such as when hundreds of shoppers are rushing to collect marked-down goods — they generate a different feeling entirely. Competition creates what’s called hedonic shopping value, or a sense of enjoyment from the mere process of buying goods.” So these shoppers are developing a mob mentality and sense of competition with each other to put a higher value on scarce goods than they might usually have.
Everyone who thinks about Black Friday will think about the yelling, fighting, stealing from other customers, etc all done to ensure that someone gets the deals she sought. An interesting statistic states that, “18 out of 25 Black Friday retailers interviewed reported seeing some sort of “consumer misbehavior” on the day.” This number could seem troubling, why would more than half of retailers see someone acting poorly? Possibly from customers shopping for long hours on little sleep.
Future Reading Question: How are other late night shoppers on normal days different or similar to those on Black Friday?
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