Videos- Seasons Beatings,
"Black & Blue Friday"
Only in America...
It's Black Friday which means the US is flooded with videos of its favorite pastime: mauls in the malls, as vicious brawls and fights break out among total strangers across across America's countless retail outlets.
The first videos trickle in:
And yet, this year there may be a shift.
Moments ago IBM Watson Trend released the latest Thanksgiving online sales which rose 26% from 2014, with mobile traffic reaching nearly 60% of all online traffic, an increase of 14.8% over 2014. According to IBM, consumers spent $123.45/order with 40% of all online sales came from mobile devices, an increase of 24% over Thanksgiving 2014.
Some other notable findings:
- Smartphones accounted for 47% of all Thanksgiving online traffic vs tablets at 13.7%; smartphones also surpassed tablets in sales, driving 24% of online sales vs tablets at 16%
- IBM Watson predicts Black Friday online sales up more than 14.5% y/y
- Consumers indicate top products incl. Apple Watch, Samsung, Sony, LG TVs, Microsoft Surface Pro 4
And while this is good news for the Amazons of the world as consumers continue to migrate to online shopping platforms, this is bad news for traditional brick-and-mortar retailers for whom today was supposed to be the one day when sales are solidly in the "black."
As Bloomberg summarizes, the online rush comes as Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Macy’s Inc. and other chains roll out their Black Friday specials, aiming to get more shoppers into stores. About 135.8 million Americans are expected to shop in stores or online over the four-day weekend, according to the National Retail Federation, the largest U.S. retail trade organization. The amount they’ve spent has declined over the past two years, dropping 11 percent to $50.9 billion in 2014.
Though consumers are benefiting from lower fuel prices and unemployment rates, retailers have their challenges. Mall traffic is in the midst of a long-term slowdown, and shoppers are spending more on experiences and less on stuff. More recently, a warm autumn has curtailed sales of seasonal merchandise, leaving stores with excess inventory. All those factors point to a need for heavy discounting -- good for consumers, but not so great for retailers’ profits.
“From the perspective of the amount of discounting that’s going on, the over-inventory situation, it seems like there are going to be a lot of great deals in the next 45 days,” said Bob Drbul, a retail analyst at Nomura Securities International.The NRF’s traffic forecast represents a 1.6 percent increase from last year although in a zero-sum market, "there’s a risk that fewer shoppers than expected may show up." Last year, the NRF had forecast 140.1 million consumers would hit stores and e-commerce sites, 4.8 percent more than actually turned out, according to its post-weekend shopping survey. Expect more of the same as the transition to online shopping accelerates.
Furthermore increasingly more stores are pulling back on their Thanksgiving weekend hours this year and electing to spread more of their specials throughout the month. Wal-Mart said it expects record crowds on Friday, even though it’s putting most of its discounts online first.
Black Friday: Americans Brawl Over Vegetable Steamers
Woman steals item from child, squabble ensues
A video out of Saginaw, Michigan shows Black Friday shoppers brawling over vegetable steamers, as one woman steals an item from a child before being physically attacked by the kid’s mother.
The clip shows shoppers tumbling over a
pile of the vegetable steamers before one woman grabs a steamer being
held by a child who looks under the age of 6. The mother of the child
then tries to wrestle the box back off her as she screams, “Why are you
being so aggressive – you’re scaring me!”
The
individual who posted the video on YouTube was presumably an employee
of the store, commenting that they didn’t want to be fired for making
the footage public.
The video is yet another example of how Americans go nuts for products which they don’t really need and can’t really afford.
As we reported yesterday,
Black Friday is a complete scam based around the myth that shoppers are
getting discounts they wouldn’t get at any other time of the year.
In
reality, stores enjoy higher profit margins during the holiday period
because retailers artificially inflate prices of goods in the months
before Black Friday in order to make the subsequent discounts look good
in comparison.
Many of the same
deals for which shoppers spend hours camped outside stores are also
available online anyway, in some cases days in advance of Black Friday.
Mark
Dice is also out performing his usual duty of shaming Thanksgiving
shoppers who would rather camp on the street to buy a new flat screen TV
than spend time with their families.
Suffice to say, there was no sign of any of the zombies clamoring to get into Barnes and Noble.
Expect many more scenes like the ones in the video below throughout the rest of the day.
Zombie Plague Sweeps America: Video Proof!
Black Friday 2015: Brutal fights break out in American malls as shoppers clash over best deals
A police officer broke up the fight, as shown in the footage, which lasts at least 30 seconds. It’s unclear what sparked the fight.
Elsewhere across the country numerous clips of violence were posted on social media show fights breaking out with one showing a group of young teenagers punching each other outside a shop.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/black-friday-2015-brutal-fights-6909924
