How retail’s biggest event became a letdown
Early on Black Friday morning, shoppers rush inside as the doors of a Walmart store open in Fairfax, Virginia, Nov. 28, 2008.
Gerald Martineau | Washington Post | Getty Images
Black Friday has long been defined by huge crowds, rock-bottom prices and rabid consumers willing to bite, scratch and claw their way to the season’s best deals. But these days, retail’s biggest holiday looks a little different.
Stores are opening their doors late, foot traffic is stagnating, online shopping is on the rise, and in a world where Black Friday starts in September, consumers are cautious and unsure if the deals they’re getting are that good.
“The integrity of the event has largely been destroyed,” said Mark Cohen, the former CEO of Sears Canada who served as director of retail studies at Columbia Business School for a decade. “It used to be that the Black Friday price was the best price you could find on an item…never to be seen again. Nowadays, promotional prices are getting better and better for the consumer as we get closer to the holiday.”
A line forms at 4 a.m. for the Black Friday opening of the Kohl’s store in Pleasanton, California, on November 27, 2009.
Michael Macor | San Francisco Chronicle | Hearst Newspapers | Getty Images
While Black Friday remains a critical day for many retailers and is arguably the most popular shopping day of the year, it is no longer defined by the in-person experience. Millions of shoppers are expected to visit malls, department stores and specialty retailers on Friday, but millions more are expected to stay at home and shop online from their phones and computers.
This means a change in strategy for retailers who have long gone all-in on Black Friday. Walmart, Aim And Macy’s. Some, like Kohl’s, launch their holiday sales earlier in the season. Others, like Walmart, break promotions into separate events; one in mid-November, another on the holiday weekend, and finally a one-day event on Cyber Monday. Many people plan to stay closed on Thanksgiving but will still offer online deals during the holiday.
“I still remember lining up outside stores for the special sales that every retailer would advertise,” said Denish Shah, department chair and professor of marketing at Georgia State University’s Robinson College of Business. “Whereas now it takes weeks to a few days, and consumers often do so through online sales from the comfort of their homes.”
More people shopped online in-store on Black Friday over the past six years, and foot traffic has remained relatively steady following a post-Covid spike, according to data from the National Retail Federation and Placer.ai, an analytics firm that uses anonymized data from mobile devices to predict overall visits to locations.
Since 2021, Black Friday store visits are up more than 50% of the daily average for the entire year, but the amount of foot traffic to stores the day after Thanksgiving doesn’t increase much. Placer.ai shows.
From 2023 to 2025, the number of Millennial and Gen X consumers who planned to do most of their shopping on Black Friday dropped. According to data from the Bank of America Institute, this period is largely flat for Gen Z and baby boomer shoppers.
Meanwhile, the amount of money people spent during the so-called Türkiye 5, the period of shopping days that stretches from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday, has decreased for the second year in a row, according to the NRF. Between 2019 and 2024, spending fell nearly 13%.
This decline is expected to continue this year, with consumers planning to spend an average of 4 percent less in Turkey, according to a recent survey by Deloitte.
“It’s going to be a day full of retailers’ highlights, like doorbusters, some additional promotions, etc.,” said Tiffany Yeh, partner and managing director of Boston Consulting Group’s consumer practice. “But it’s quieter.”
How did Black Friday lose its edge?
When the modern version of Black Friday became popular in the 1980s, it took a year to achieve it, Cohen said.
“The art was to persuade a vendor to give you a huge discount on cost so that you could create this extremely attractive offer to the consumer, which would then benefit you in terms of the balance of the holiday season,” he recalled. “But it required a huge amount of work.”
Retailers had to choose the perfect product, set the perfect price, and make sure they weren’t aware of their competitors’ promotional plans. They then had to make sure they ordered enough stock to run out of stock, but not so soon that it would lead to riots.
Black Friday shoppers flock to a Best Buy store in Los Angeles at 5 a.m. on November 28, 2008.
Jewelry Samad | AFP | Getty Images
But over time, as Black Friday became more popular, retailers began extending the shopping holiday so that the biggest sales of the year could last longer than one day. Stores first opened early on Friday morning, then began opening on Thanksgiving, and then promotions began the day before. Promotions spread across products in every department as consumers began to expect discounts on more than a handful of items.
“In other words, they started watering it down to keep the ride going,” Cohen said.
As discounts spread storewide, operational success behind inventory and staffing becomes more difficult to manage, prompting retailers to roll out promotions sooner, Yeh said.
“It is always difficult to increase the workforce so significantly over a short period of time,” he said. “If it’s just for one day, people won’t necessarily want to sign up; conversely, if it’s for a longer season, then you’re more likely to find the necessary team members and be able to train them.”
At the same time, consumer habits began to change in the background.
Are Black Friday deals still worth it?
Online shopping had been on a slow and steady rise for 20 years, but adoption has skyrocketed during the Covid-19 pandemic. There’s no longer a need for retailers to stage such a massive in-person show on Black Friday because online sales are increasingly outpacing sales in stores.
Shah said expanding Black Friday into a seasonal event also makes it easier for consumers to spread out their own spending.
“November and December are two different payment periods for many consumers,” he said. “It makes a difference if they can spread their expenses over two pay periods instead of a single pay period.”
Of course, there’s also debate about how good the discounts actually are on Black Friday, especially in a soft economy where retailers are also turning heavily to promotions to boost sales. They increase prices to offset tariffs.
People fill the first floor of the Macy’s store in New York City, which opened for Black Friday sales at midnight on November 23, 2012.
StanHonda | AFP | Getty Images
Sonia Lapinsky, head of consulting firm AlixPartners’ global fashion practice, said “rampant discounting” across the industry before, during and after the holiday shopping season has left many consumers feeling “skeptical” about promotions in general. Lapinsky said some promotions this holiday season may also hide price increases, bringing the cost down to where it was before the ticket price was increased.
“They had the power to cross-shop and look for these discounts, and now there’s just a lack of trust,” Lapinsky said. “They’re tired of doing it, and there’s a lack of confidence that they’re actually getting the value of the work.”
For example, like brands Openness, Levi Strauss And Under Armor Black Friday started its sales on Thanksgiving Day, and the promotions were comparable to those offered earlier in the season.
“The idea of creating urgency is completely stupid and gone,” Cohen said. “Like many headlines purporting to suggest a deal, the deal is a form of fraud.”
