Black Friday - Customers Demand

                Recently in economics class we have been reviewing the topics of elasticity and inelasticity and how it can affect the supply and demand of a product. Seeing how Christmas is right around the corner and black Friday had just occurred, I would like to take a moment to show you how it can affect the supply and demand of a product. 

On November 29 a glorious Friday, millions of Americans and some Canadians woke up for the annual Black Friday Day sale some people waking up as early as 4 in the morning just to stand in line at a Best Buy or Future Shop just to get the biggest bang for their buck. Now how does this relate to the topic of economics? Well most of us know that people are cheap and when there is a possibility to save money we go nuts. Marketers use this day as a way to jump start the Holiday season, sucking in individuals to buy their products at outrageous deals and then getting them hooked and wanting to come back for more. For example a pair of Nike shoes normally going for $109.99 is dropped down to $79.99, now how are companies able to afford these outrageous price drops? By selling these elastic products in higher quantities then which they normally do making a quick profit and clearing out all of the old year’s stuff that was not able to sell in the previous year. It is also a way the companies can get rid of products that were not doing so well, but pricing them so low that the customer just “has” to buy it. So even though a product may be not selling as well and demand is very low, they can increase the demand by decreasing these prices during the sale. Funny how just days before its thanksgiving and they give thanks for everything they have then go crazy the next day wanting everything.

For some stores though these black Friday Day sales backfired says Forbes magazine. Walmart wanted to take the holiday in a new way this year, avoiding the stampedes of people and the trampling of some by opening their doors a day early on the Thursday. This being the case it brought about a leisurely shopping for everyone, and not huge stampedes of people racing to every deal they had. By having the extra day to shop people were not as worried about passing by on a great deal so initially less people showed up and not as much product was sold. By keeping black Friday limited to the one day, companies can get very high demand for their products almost selling all of inventory. But even though for some stores it backfired for others it was a marketing success.

 Just before the big sales, companies like to jack up their prices extra high, for example a TV its marked up to $1500 but originally only $900. Companies will slowly lower the price from $1500 to $1200 and then on the day of the sale go back to $900 so that they can say that is a great deal because it was originally $1500 and now its $900 making it seem like you made savings of $600 but really you paid for exactly what the marker wanted and the original price. So now that people know of these scams you think they would be smarter but people still continue to think they are getting a deal. But not only did this black friday have dirty discounts but there had been some dirty shopping as well when fights began to break out in many of the stores offering the sales. But what can you expect from a bunch of Americans, anyways continuing on about the price and demand many of the stores in which their sales had backfired on them said they could make up there loss in profits through Cyber Monday where you could only get deals online. This opened up the sales to everyone who was to lazy to actually go out to the stores or wanted to avoid the hassle and stampedes and in turn also opened into the cyber market. The Demand for certain goods would increase because of it now being available online, customers can get a product with only a click of a button in turn making more profits even though there are major discounts on some items. 
In conclusion it seems that when these when these sales come around it really does not matter the price of a product or not as long as it says sale on the label people are going to buy it.