Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff, I'm Lauren Vogelbaum. And for scores of Americans, as soon as they digest their Thanksgiving turkey, it's time to think about holiday shopping. Local newspapers where such still exists are bursting with circulars and advertisements heralding Black Friday sales, and every retailer that's ever gotten hold of your email address
has been sending desperately friendly missives. Coined in the nineteen sixties, Black Friday refers to the day after Thanksgiving that marks the traditional kickoff of the holiday shopping season. The black in black Friday symbolizes stores turning a profit, being in the black versus in the red, with the term stemming from an age when handwritten financial ledgers recorded profits and black ink and deficits in red ink. These days, many
stores don't even wait for Friday morning. They open at midnight or even earlier on Thanksgiving evening to give deal hungry shoppers an early start for the shell. But is Black Friday really the biggest shopping day of the year in America? Not Everyone is eager to whip out their wallets. While the scent of pumpkin pie still lingers in the air. You can divide holiday shoppers into two distinct camps, the
Black Friday go getters and the procrastinators. Braving a retail mall the day after Thanksgiving can involve heavy crowds and seemingly endless masses of cars waiting to find parking, people elbowing their way through aisles and queues once you're finally ready to check out, All the while, the NonStop tune of jingle bells, the most frequently played holiday song in shopping malls, goes jingling all the way into every crevice
of your brain. Black Friday enthusiasts say it's worth the hassle, though, since many stores will strip down prices to move merchandise. As far as the number of humans who walk in and out of stores, Black Friday hauls them in a hundred and one million braved. The crowds in that heavy Black Friday foot traffic translates to high dollar profits, accounting for four point five to five of all holiday sales
in two thousand fourteen. The average shoppers spent about three hundred and eighty one dollars over Thanksgiving weekend of the total retail spending was about fifty one billion dollars, and although more recent numbers are difficult to track down, trendwatchers say they have been going up, But these undeniably large numbers aren't the largest of the season. In fact, Black Friday isn't the busiest shopping day of the year normally,
despite what popular opinion holds. Instead, the holiday shopping procrastinators win out. The highest sales day of the year usually strikes the Saturday before Christmas. How is that possible? If shoppers line up in front of stores at the crack of dawn on Black Friday, a customer volume goes through the roof, but sales don't follow. Suit surveys have shown that despite these steady streams of people flowing into stores on Black Friday, not all of them drive home with
trunks full of holiday presents. For instance, one study conducted by researchers at Indiana University found a consistently low rate of purchase among Black Friday shoppers. Higher percentage of those shoppers bought items the following day. Internet shopping and early previews of Black Friday sales leaked online may also trim the amount of transactions that day, as people have more options for tracking down the best bang for their holiday buck.
In two thousand five, online retailers designated the Monday after Thanksgiving to be Cyber Monday. The web merchants figured that this day would see a substantial sales bump because a
majority of online shoppers make their purchases at work. With the general boom in online sales, the distinctions are breaking down as people shop online every day of the Thanksgiving weekend, including Turkey Day itself, with two thirds of all orders coming in from smartphones and tablets as and Black Friday is a phenomenon that's spread beyond the States, as of countries like Spain, South Africa, and the UK which do not celebrate Thanksgiving nonetheless saw increases of up to forty
six percent over that weekend versus their average daily sales online. Oh and in case you were wondering a out another shopping holiday over Thanksgiving weekend, Small Business Saturday was created by the goliath credit card company American Express as a way to encourage spending at small, local shops. Today's episode was written by Kristen Conger and produced by Tyler Clang. If you're doing some shopping this weekend, consider our online
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