Black Friday? Amazon Always!

In case you don’t live in America, or you do and choose to ignore social calendars, this week holds the holiday of Thanksgiving on Thursday, a mixed-message celebration of the arrival of the Pilgrims, and is followed by what is known as “Black Friday”.  What better way to celebrate the arrival of our poor, hungry, puritanical ancestors than to participate in a heathen festival of money throwing and retail gorging?

Sorry, but the cake is a lie.

For the last decade, Amazon.com has positioned itself as the de facto online retail destination where almost all products can be found on the cheap – even those you didn’t know you wanted.  It started with CD book sales and has rapidly expanded to include everything you can buy in a brick-and-mortar store:  electronics, clothes, music, gardening supplies, kitchen utensils… everything.

This is why Black Friday is on its way out.

Black Friday occurs either one of two ways, from a retailer perspective:  either they mark up the prices so high that a “50% off” deal is really more expensive than the item was a week prior, or they make very small profit margins off each item while hoping for large volume.  The problem here lies in their inability to use a crystal ball – not only have retail sales been declining recently because of the Great Recession, thereby erasing any low-price-high-volume ideas, but they had also stagnated prior to the economic catastrophe of 2008.

The reason for this is obvious:  Amazon’s sales have been skyrocketing ever since 2003, and in a world where teenagers, young adults, and the otherwise youthful-at-heart prefer to spend their shopping time getting what they want or need, for low prices, in a matter of moments, retail seems doomed.  As a busy, budding adult of almost-22, it’s far easier for me to order anything I need via Amazon and have it appear two days later at my apartment door than it is to find it at some store, fight the unwashed masses, and wait in line for two hours to overpay.

It is my belief, which is founded upon raw data and the sage knowledge of the informed young, that Black Friday 2009 will be a catastrophic disaster, and may actually be the last time it’s promoted so heavily.  People don’t have money, and aren’t spending as much as they normally would, so does fighting over a “Tickle Me Elmo” in Walmart at 6am really seem that appealing?  That fistful of cash could easily pay for some of the economic farce that is fuel, or maybe help me upgrade my food for a day from tomatoes and rice to flavorful baked beans.

The proof will be in the pudding, as it were, but if the economic indicators and societal mood has shown anything in the last year or more, it’s that Americans are no longer willing to spend money willy-nilly, and corporate greed has become one of their pet peeves.

Now if only Goldman Sachs had a Black Friday sale, they might be pushed to legitimate bankruptcy…

Kyle Brady is a contributing columnist for the Inquisitr, an entrepreneur, and has a future in science fiction.  He can be found at his blog, via email, or on Twitter.