Many thought the online retail industry’s rapid insertion into our everyday shopping routines would turn Black Friday into a craze of the past. Deal-obsessed shopaholics would no longer need to camp outside Best Buy on Thanksgiving afternoon because a better deal could be delivered right to their door. Though the videos of department store scrums over electronics are entertaining, we thought, at last folks could finally spend more precious minutes with their families because gifts could be purchased from the recliner.
Alas, these hopes merely represented our undying trust in technology and our unwillingness to accept an addiction to consumerism. According to Adobe Digital Insights, online shoppers spent nearly 17 percent more money on Black Friday than last year. One might think this meant fewer people rushed to stores and malls. Nope. A data analytics firm, ShopperTrak, found that foot traffic in actual stores decreased less than 1 percent from the same time in 2016. So, while internet shopping on Thanksgiving and Black Friday definitely increased as expected, people were still heading to the malls before the leftovers were cold.
These findings present a grim reality for the future of our shopping obsession, phone addiction and family get-togethers. Instead of using internet retail as a reason to stay home, folks are both scrolling through deals while spending time with loved ones and still choosing to go to stores. Holiday time would be better spent if only one of these shopping strategies was considered necessary by the shopaholics.
If the disappearance of treasured holiday time with friends and family is not enough to convince people to cut down on big box retail shopping for a few days, perhaps the negative effect on local business is. As more and more shoppers flock to giant retailers like Wal-Mart and Amazon, local businesses who cannot afford the same price-slashing luxury are squeezed and the Christmas shopping experience is lost. Christmas giving will no longer be about finding unique items like the Red Ryder BB Gun that Ralphie spots at Higbee’s in “A Christmas Story.” The supposedly happy season will continue devolving into a months-long, cutthroat competition for expendable gadgets.
Christmas shopping is a fun addition to the lights, music and general cheeriness of the most wonderful time of year.
Black Friday, for its excitement, has been a fun part of that tradition for some time now. It becomes destructive however, when the thrill of shopping comes at the expense of shared company with friends and family. Christmastime may lose some of its chaos if we resist the temptations of competitive shopping.
Photo: Gridpop via Wikimedia Commons
