Back in the 1950s, police in the city of Philadelphia used the term โBlack Fridayโ to describe the chaos on the day after Thanksgiving, when suburban shoppers and tourists flooded into the city before the big Army-Navy football game that was held on that Saturday every year. However, in the late 1980s, retailers somehow found a way to reinvent Black Friday and turn it into something that reflected positively, and so Black Friday still exists up to this day, attracting shoppers all around the world.
According to the PwC report, last year more than ยพ of retailers in the UK participated in some sort of a promotional activity during the week. However, the result from this year's survey suggest that half of Brits are not interested in Black Friday whatsoever, and even amongst those who are, they do not plan to increase their spending compared with last year (around ยฃ234 pp).
There are also signs that shoppers may be reaching exhaustion over Black Friday, partly because of a growing belief that the โbargainsโ offered may not be as attractive as they seem.
High streets and shopping centres are also predicted to see fewer people this Black Friday weekend, as shoppers tend to go online instead. The sales these days are now a four-day long event culminating in so-called Cyber Monday, which is now the busiest internet shopping day of the year in the UK.