The Digerati Life

To many, this is “buy or die” week, Black Friday or bust. I’ve never shopped on the day after Thanksgiving. Ever. I’ve never figured out how people can brave the elements, fight over limited parking spots, stand in long lines waiting for store doors to open, then try to avoid being trampled upon during the mob stampedes. Why Oh Why do people subject themselves to this? I will actually PAY to avoid crowds, parking difficulties, the inconvenience and the waiting. Time, after all, is money too! Well no wonder I’m here just blogging about it, rather than participating in the buying frenzy. Let’s see why I avoid this like the plague while others revel in it: I culled together a collection of quotes and interesting facts I found in various stories about this day from CNN Money and the San Francisco Chronicle to explain why I hole up at home during the buying season.

“I just heard about [T.M.X. Elmo] in the summer and when I came here, they said they were all sold out,” said Terminator Coles, who waited three hours in front of the Toys R’ Us flagship store to buy one of the red robots for his 1-year-old son. “I figured if I came here the day after Thanksgiving, they’d have one.”

From my experience, little babies don’t really have that much of an attention span and toys are easily recycled and outgrown, so I hit Craigslist for many children’s items at an immediate discount. Then if the kid ignores the toy after a few hours, I won’t feel so bad.

Shoppers aren’t afraid to spend money this year. Donna Brown, visiting the Times Square store with her family from Jacksonville, Fla., said she doubled her spending this year to $1,500.

This is what retailers want to hear: this puts the Black in Black Friday.

One hot item was a 19-inch TruTech flat-screen TV, selling for $179. A few customers even loaded up on four of the television sets. “I see everyone getting it, but I don’t really know how much it’s worth,” said 40-year-old Margalie Simon, who was carrying her own TruTech TV.

“My wife sent me out for this one,” he said, pointing to the television in his shopping cart. “But then I saw this one (a 20-inch conventional TV) for $85 and said, what the heck, I’ll get that one, too.“

Fourteen-year-old Marie Logan had $1,000 burning a hole in her pocket Friday at 5:30 a.m. when she arrived at the Glendale Galleria in suburban Los Angeles with her mother and 11-year-old brother. “I just bought whatever I liked,” said Logan.

This is why the frenzy is not just potentially physically dangerous. It plays with your mind as well. When you get caught up in any frenzy, your brain shuts down and the herd instinct kicks in. This whole event may be dangerous to your wallet; rather than save, you can end up spending more on things you may not need since the temptation to make your effort be worth something is strong. The crowd tendency to spend is heightened, so it’s another “madness of crowds” moment.

They were plenty of customers like Brian Clark, 27, who left empty-handed from the West Hartford Best Buy after the televisions and computers he’d eyed as Christmas gifts were snatched by even earlier shoppers. The Xbox sold out in 29 seconds, Berman said. Amazon also sold out of discounted Mongoose mountain bikes, Barbie dolls and Amazon Prime memberships with $100 gift certificates in about 15 minutes.

Toy industry analysts pegged T.M.X. Elmo, video game consoles PlayStation 3 and Wii and HDTVs as a few of the hottest things to buy this holiday season. But good luck finding them. Many stores already posted “out of stock” signs on these products days ahead of Black Friday.

What would be the point of the experience if you won’t be guaranteed that you will get what you want? Well that could be the case on any other shopping day, but this day at the mall to me is scary. Let’s look at the bright side: at least if you end up empty-handed, you saved the money for another day.

Alarmed by a recent shooting of a customer waiting outside a Connecticut Wal-Mart for the highly sought Sony’s PlayStation 3 game console, Clark had tucked his Glock pistol in a holster under his jacket and put extra ammunition in his pocket before heading out early Friday.

Just another thing to worry about: more crowds, potentially more trouble. This is one of the reasons I don’t go out on this day.

Having camped out in front of the store for 24 hours, Sterio passed up Thanksgiving dinner offers from friends in order to drive down in his RV and buy a $380 laptop, a $190 desktop computer, a TV/DVD combination unit and other gizmos at steep discounts. “I’m pretty hungry,” Sterio said as he jostled in yet another line inside the store at the computer section. “I missed Thanksgiving dinner. I sacrificed that.”

“We had chairs, sleeping bags, a football,” she said. “We didn’t eat much, just some junk food.”

It’s all about priorities! For many, this sounds like absolute, utter fun and excitement, like a rite of passage you need to go through if you’re living in America. Scalpers should also watch out: this could happen to you!

Isabel Quintanilla of Los Angeles waited in a long line outside the Disney Store at the Glendale mall with her impatient nephew for 45 minutes. A watchful security guard posted outside made sure no one was taking cuts. Once inside the store, it took Quintanilla 60 minutes to pay for her items, which meant she missed the 10 a.m. deadline to get an extra 20 percent off on top of the 40 percent off. But for her, the wait was worth it. After checking out her store receipt, she noticed she saved $14.40.

All that pain to save $14.40. That was $14.40 for 2 hours of your life in an unpredictable mosh pit, maybe not including commute time either. I prefer to save $14.40 by buying less merchandise.

 
And have you heard about the tourists who come to the United States just to shop on Black Friday?

Visitors usually flock to metro areas, like Chicago, Los Angeles and New York, and also major border cities, like San Antonio, which draws Mexican nationals to its North Star Mall. Japanese jet-setters come to Honolulu’s Ala Moana shopping center for high-end fashion retailers like Dior, Fendi, Louis Vuitton and Hermes. In Miami, tourists are headed to Miami-based Dolphin Mall from Latin America, Mexico, Brazil and the Caribbean.

They travel here because:

• of the better prices they get for American brands. “Tourists are finding great value over here since we have items that they cannot get, and it’s way more expensive to import them over there.”
• believe it or not, some enterprises are now marketing Black Friday to tour operators.
• it’s a spectacle tourists want to see and they want part of the action. “They want to see the madness of people going to the mall at 5 a.m. to go shopping because that usually doesn’t happen in any other country,” said Lucia Plazis, a marketing specialist for Taubman Centers’ Dolphin Mall.

Why do people risk life and limb and sacrifice turkey for STUFF? According to Marshal Cohen, chief analyst at NPD Group Inc., Black Friday is “becoming the biggest sport”; sure, just like running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. Even with the day over, you can look forward to another big shopping day on “Cyber Monday”, on the first day of work after Thanksgiving, when people go shopping online at the office(!) in record numbers.

As for me, I try to get our Christmas shopping all wrapped up in October.

< Source: CNN Money, San Francisco Chronicle >