Considering that Black Friday is a totally made-up event meant to stir up retail sales during the peak winter holiday shopping season, it shouldn't come as a surprise that stores are loosey-goosey with what "Black Friday" means. Even so, the current Black Friday hosted by Home Depot seems a bit much.
Here’s a look back at the frantic holiday shopping season that’s just passed—and that, among other things, reached a high point for self-gifting, shoplifting, free shipping, and procrastination. Without further adieu, this holiday season’s top 10 shopping trends.
Apparently, the regular old bustling holiday shopping season isn’t enough for retailers constantly looking for new ways to stir up business and increase sales numbers. Nowadays, to rouse consumers into ceaseless shopping sprees, it seems like every other day from the end of November through December is branded as a sales “event” of one kind [...]
Consumer debt figures show it: we’re getting tired of being so darned frugal. Here are five guidelines to keep you from borrowing too much.
It has been a huge year for retail sales so far in the holiday shopping season, with $52 billion spent over Black Friday weekend and another $6 billion spent online during the “Cyber Week” that followed. Here’s one more hot consumer trend, which is unsurprising given the still-shaky state of the economy: More and more [...]
Increasingly, online shoppers won’t complete their orders unless free shipping is part of the deal. Nearly two-thirds of online purchases last week were shipped for free.
Holiday season sales aren’t solely the province of electronics, sweaters and $2 toasters. Some of the biggest discounts out there are on a surprising sector of goods: luxury homes. Some of the priciest homes on the market are offering deep discounts, many to the tune of several million dollars. And these real estate bargains aren’t [...]
Electronics are on the top of the shopping list for many consumers this holiday season: Nearly 4 in 10 shoppers purchased electronics over Black Friday weekend, contributing to the whopping $52 billion total spent at stores. Among the hottest electronics are the latest tablets and e-readers from the likes of Apple and Amazon, and the [...]
The seeming economic success of this year’s Black Friday-But-Really-Thursday got us wondering what we as a country have gained in terms of what psychologists often term well-being, i.e., happiness.
Shoppers blew away even the most optimistic projections of retail analysts by dropping just over $52 billion on Black Friday weekend, according to the National Retail Federation. It’s a bonanza for merchants, but it comes with a dark flip side: Numerous surveys indicate that Americans are using their credit cards to fuel this buying binge.
Shoppers have dropped tens of billions of dollars in stores and online over the last five days. What does such an impressive outpouring tell us about today’s consumer mentality, and the state of the economy as a whole?
