Holiday Shopping Highlights of 2009
The traditional kick-off to the annual Christmas holiday shopping season is the day after Thanksgiving, dubbed “Black Friday.” Historically, this has been the day that retail stores go from being “in the red,” or negative, to being profitable, or “in the black.” Retail stores today operate on a more even ledger year round, but a successful Black Friday is necessary for a profitable bottom line. Over the past few years, retail stores have started opening earlier and earlier on Black Friday; it’s not unusual to see people waiting in line for hours in the cold December night air just to get a good deal on electronics and other hot holiday items. In 2009, trends went even more extreme, with some stores like Wal-Mart remaining open on Thanksgiving Day, with one day only special offers for those wanting to get a jump start on their holiday shopping. Many stores also opened with door buster sales at midnight, allowing people to stay up late on Thanksgiving night to do their Black Friday shopping instead of waiting until morning.
Each year’s holiday shopping season is different and forecasts of expectations are rampant. A myriad of factors effects how much people spend during the holidays, but the state of the economy always weighs heavily on shopping trends. Ironically, in the downturned economy, Black Friday 2009 was a big spending day because people were on the hunt for good deals. Of special interest to many shoppers was electronics, which experienced an 8% growth in sales over the previous year.¹ In a normal economy, people are more likely to forgo the early bird specials traditionally offered on this day in order to enjoy sleeping in. But in a bad economy, people depend on fantastic Black Friday savings and head out early for good deals.²
If money didn’t prevent people from spending money during the 2009 shopping season, the weather certainly did. The East Coast suffered a blizzard in the final days before Christmas, forcing shoppers to stay at home and do their last minute Christmas shopping online; some shopping centers in Virginia and New Jersey closed early because of the storms. Many online retailers such as Amazon.com were offering cheap or free 2-day shipping upgrades, which ensured gifts arrived in time for the holidays. In fact, according to the New York Times, internet sales increased 12.3% when compared to November 2008.² Whether last minute internet shopping because of storms, or a preference for online shopping in general, e-commerce fared well during the 2009 holiday shopping season.
Although people did do a lot of their shopping online, there were shoppers in stores for Black Friday and with that, an inevitable scuffle. Although minor compared to the 2008 incident at a New York state Wal-Mart store where an employee was trampled to death, there was some commotion in a California Wal-Mart that prompted the store to close for a few hours. Because of the death the previous year, the store remained opened all night to avoid a stampede at opening time. The store had plans to stock door busters at 5 a.m., but customers began opening shrink-wrapped pallets and arguing over merchandise. Law enforcement cleared the store without any arrests, re-opening a little after 6 a.m.³
While the incident in California was one of the only documented cases of unruly shoppers, it was not the isolated case of a store temporarily closing on Black Friday. The Macy’s flagship store at Herald’s Square in New York City was closed for about 90 minutes on Friday evening when one of the store’s metal escalators caught fire. No injuries were reported, although the store was filled with smoke and shoppers were evacuated.⁴ Customers forced out into the cold began using Twitter to talk about this exciting, unexpected incident in their shopping day.
Interestingly, Twitter has made its way into the mainstay of many people and it became very common in 2009 for customers to use the free service to share exciting bargains and shopping highlights. Stores even got in on the action, using their Twitter pages to tell customers about special sales and give shopping tips. The Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota used Twitter to tell customers which parking lots had space available.⁵
There was one particular gift that got a lot of Tweets during the 2009 holiday shopping season: Zhu Zhu pets. Zhu Zhu pets are the $8 robotic hamsters that were on just about every child’s Christmas list. Available in 5 different styles, with names such as Chunk, PipSqueak, Mr. Squiggles, Num Nums and Patches, many children found a favorite to covet. Kids love them because they seem to have a mind of their own, darting randomly about the room and making 40 realistic noises. Parents favor them for their cheap retail prices and the fact that, like their real counterparts, they don’t chew furniture or make stinky messes. Similar to other top toys of past seasons, they became very hard to find during the 2009 holiday shopping, selling out within minutes of being stocked on store shelves. Some stores even limited sales to one pet per household, ensuring that there were enough furry, robotic rodents to go around.⁶ Unfortunately, this did not deter profiteers from buying them in bulk and selling them online, with prices of the $8 rodents skyrocketing to upwards of $60 on sites like Amazon.com and eBay.com.
Overall, the 2009 season was a good one for shopping malls and outlets throughout the United States during the shopping season, despite the recession. People found reasons to get out and buy, whether for personal gifts, electronics, or furry little robotic hamsters.
(1) http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/02/business/02shop.html
(2) http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/30/business/30retail.html
(3) http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2009/11/black-friday-walmart-in-upland-temporarily-closes-after-fighting-inside.html
(4) http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-12-20-macys-escalator-fire_N.htm
(5) http://online.worldmag.com/2009/11/28/twitter-christmas-shopping/
(6) http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/business/21toys.html?_r=1
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