Black Friday

It’s 1 a.m. Friday and the temperature is in the 20s with a biting windchill. And yet, there is a line of 50 plus people waiting outside of Best Buy for their Black Friday “door busters.” They set up tents, brought warm blankets and coffee for a four hour wait that might not prove to be fruitful.

So what motivates these early morning shoppers? A good buy? A tradition? Loyalty? Or a fancy combination of all these things?

I’m rooting for the latter personally. There’s a certain thrill to pouring over the ads in the newspaper during the Thanksgiving turkey lull. Marking the deals that interest you and then plotting out a plan to go to three different stores before 8 a.m. to capture these great deals. During this one day of crazy shopping it’s not about where you’re shopping at as much as what you’re shopping for. Parents may stalk Toys R Us and Wal-Mart ads, while I snooped around for the best e-reader deal. On this day it really is about saving a buck.

So loyalty to a particular store sorta goes out the window for November 26th. I’m sure this is something most stores don’t relish as they spend the entire year branding themselves to bolster loyalty among customers. Instead they switch to “loss leaders” that convince shoppers to stop by. Companies can only cross their fingers and pray that customers buy other things as well.

So then, why do companies continue to slash prices on this day? While the happy shopper in me wants to believe that they do it to make me happy, I’m sure they turn a nice profit. I’ve worked retail and here’s my super shopper secret. Shop early on Jan. 1st. The sales are crazy at department stores and all over. And I can say that even with the low sale prices, stores make a killing. So I’m sure Black Friday sales still earn a nice profit margin for the stores.

But I still want to believe in this concept of loyalty to a tradition. Even if it is my tradition to drive by the stores, decide it’s too cold and then go home, drink wine and continue to look the ads over. Then go 12 hours later and still manage to get my Nook on sale. Booyah!