India’s Second Shopping Season: Back Friday and the Christmas Cheer

The last month of the year is often one of the busiest for economies like the US where Christmas is the biggest spending season. Starting from Thanksgiving and mid-November offers, brands and companies lure people to join the bandwagon of shoppers ahead of the Western ` biggest festival.

The Black Friday Fever

The Black Friday is the Friday falling after Thanksgiving Day when the shopping season begins in the US. The term was first coined in 1952. But has majorly gained prominence in the past couple of years. Since Thanksgiving Day is Celebrated on Thursdays, the day after that automatically becomes the ‘Black Friday’. In some countries this day is kept as a Holiday to allow people to shop.

Brands offer discounts up to as high as 50% and aim to get the sales push towards them. Some stores also keep their shops open till midnight or open very early to tap in the discount hungry crowd and offer them lucrative deals.

Initially big stores in the US started opening their shop at 6am and 5am to welcome customers. However, as the craze grew, the stores took it a step further to open the shops at midnight and eventually on the day of Thanksgiving, which caused a lot of concern among labor unions who protested against this.

The Trend in India

While this trend is mostly observed in the western countries, economies like India as also following US’s footsteps and coming up with lucrative deals and offers in the consumer driven market to encourage purchase. Brands in India too are planning discounts for the season and have decided on offering up to 50% discount on products and running campaigns to bring the buyers to the shops.

The companies offering Black Friday sales wish to spread their business activities over different parts of the year instead of letting the sales concentrate over Dusshera and Diwali period. While there are only some brands which began this practice, the tough competition in the space of fashion and retail has forced almost all major brands to start offering discounts on their products.

Added with the push from the ecommerce websites, stores are forced to open up the discount margin ahead of the winter sale season in the country.

Will This Be Successful For India?

The Diwali 2019 for many sectors of the economy was dull including auto sector, jewelry and gold as well as the electronics sector as the overall feel of a slowdown was in the air and was tangible as people avoided buying and spending. However, the markets have slightly recovered from the slowdown blues and the government has been using its machinery to boost companies across sectors. The new measures are likely to bring cheer back in the markets and make businesses see Green ahead of Christmas. Businesses are hopeful from the Black Friday sales as well as the coming up Christmas spirit this December.

‍