There is no doubt that consumers love to shop specially during sales events to take advantage of the huge discounts offered by retailers. However, consumers are not willing to sacrifice their time for their family just to go shopping on Thanksgiving.
Generally, retailers kick off the holiday shopping season with huge discounts on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. However, many retailers decided to start their big sales event on Thursday, which obviously will disrupt many families from celebrating the holiday.
Consumers urge retailers to close stores on Thanksgiving
Consumers rejected such strategy of creating a Black Thursday to boost their sales. In fact, there are currently 71 petitions on Change.org wherein consumers want retailers to change their approach related to Black Friday sales.
Hallie Dilworth of Knoxville, Tennessee is among those who started a petition to encourage consumers no to go shopping on Thanksgiving dubbed as Black Thursday. She created the petition, “Say No to Black Thursday” to encourage retailers to close their stores on Thanksgiving after a friend was compelled to work during that day at his job at a fast food chain since other stores in the mall will be open.
According to her, Thanksgiving is no longer a holiday because people will have to work and other will go shopping because the stores are open. As of today, her petition has 20,000 supporters.
“I will continue to NOT shop on Thanksgiving and will urge everyone I know to stay home. It’s an outrage that people are forced to work on the one universal holiday everyone can enjoy regardless of their personal beliefs,” commented Leslea Knauff, a supporter from Towson, Maryland.
The “Say No to Shopping on Thanksgiving” page on Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) received almost 65,000 likes and more than 13,000 people are talking about the topic
Only 18% of consumers plan to shop on Thanksgiving
According to the National Retail Federation (NRF), around 140 million consumers plan to go shopping over the weekend and only 18% have the intention to shop on Thanksgiving.
Marianne Bickle, chairperson if the retailing and fashion merchandising department at the University of South Carolina told CNN that retailers are opening their stores on Thanksgiving because there is a demand. She said, “If they weren’t making a profit on being open that day, you can bet your bottom dollar they would be closed. People are shopping.”
Bickle emphasized that she will stay at home with her family on Thanksgiving, but she plans to go shopping on Black Friday. She said, “It’s about more than just savings, it’s also about the excitement and bonding.”
