This year, Black Friday turned into Black Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Cyber Monday stretched into Cyber Tuesday.
The extension of Black Friday happened, in part, because there are five fewer days between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year. But the retail holiday, once so memorable for the local news stories of crowds mobbing store displays of TVs, is losing its significance for Gen Z.
On this week’s podcast, we discuss how online shopping has taken over the Black Friday experience – slowly, then all at once.
Then we discuss how Google had adjusted its search results for publishers’ shopping and recommendation subdomains, which vary widely in quality. On the high end, there’s Wirecutter, which tests products to recommend them; on the other end, there are slapdash affiliate recommendations that do little more than cobble together outside user reviews. So Google is taking notice of the publishers crowding in on the affiliate trend without adding much value. Some sites are seeing huge drops in search traffic to their affiliate sites as a result.
Of course, if consumers are doing online research for products, they may choose to close the sale online. In-store foot traffic on Black Friday is declining. We close by discussing what the shift to online shopping behavior means for the Black Friday tradition and beyond.
