Monday, December 7, 2015

Decline of Black Friday

            Did you go shopping on Black Friday this year? If you are a normal person, the chances are that you did. But that chance is starting to decrease! GASP! Spending on Black Friday has decreased since last year by approximately 10% (from $11.6 billion last year to $10.4 billion this year). People such as theguardian are attributing this to an increase in online shopping throughout the US and the availability for sweet dank deals prior to Black Friday itself. Instead of simply telling you that people are attributing this decline to online shopping mediums, ill prove it.

According to Adobe, after tracking activity on thousands of retail websites, those online sales jumped by 14.3% as compared to last year. Email promotions are said to have driven approximately 25% more sales as well. This means that Black Friday shopping itself is not necessarily declining, but the ways in which people are purchasing items is changing. People are still, and will continue, spending money.

What does this mean for us? Are people getting lazier? How much does the “convenience” factor weigh into shopping? There will always be people who love to go to the mall and browse through the stores. There are people who like to try on the clothes before they buy them, or have a product in their hands. These hands-on shoppers are always going to exist. But what about people who are lazy, like me? Now I have a convenient outlet for my purchasing needs. I know online shopping isn’t revolutionary or new at this point, but it is finally making a drastic difference in the amount of in-store shopping that is going on. Computers and digital technology are creeping ever so much more into our daily lives. They are basically available for everyone at this point, a constant presence (or should I say presents… get it? Cause it’s about black Friday… No… ok) in this day and age. Is this a problem? Now that people can, and do, make tons of purchases online for wants and needs there is no reason for them to go to the store. Soon, online shopping will overtake in-store shopping entirely. And the people I talked about above, who like to see their product in person before they buy them, will be a niche group. This is a logical assumption because most, if not all, stores that exist today have the option to purchase their products online or in the store. As computers make their way towards supremacy over our lives we will use them for more and more things until one day when computers and people integrate together and our humanity is lost. Such a terrible outcome, and all due to the fact that online shopping is convenient.

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