Black Friday Persuasive Speech

The biggest, busiest, blackest and most bizarre sale ever… Yes, you guessed it, Black Friday! Good morning, Mrs Naidoo and class. Today I will be digging deeper into the story behind Black Friday and revealing some of its deep, dark secrets.

Black Friday, in the United States, is the Friday after thanksgiving and one of the most successful days for retailers. It takes place between 23rd and 29th November, varying each year.

Retailers, have for decades, adhered to an unwritten rule that advertising for the festive season, should begin on the day after Thanksgiving. During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving as an official holiday, it being the final Thursday in November. In 1939, the last Thursday in November fell on the 30th,

Massive crowds of suburban shoppers and tourists piled into Center City for the big Army-Navy football game held annually on that Saturday. Cops would now have to work extremely longer shifts, having to deal with additional crowds and traffic. For Philadelphian police, who tried to direct and control the flow of traffic the day was ‘bleak’ and therefore ‘black’. It began with one traffic cop and I quote “it was the guy who directed traffic with a semaphore while standing on a small wooden platform, in the days before traffic lights.”

Later on in the 1980s retailers found a way to reinvent “Black Friday” into the bargain bonanza it has now become. As a result the “red to black” concept was introduced. Black Friday referred to businesses moving from red to black, back in the days when accounting records were kept by hand. Red ink indicated a loss and black ink a

For many years, the busiest day has been the day before Christmas. But that was until Black Friday took the lead and has maintained its position ever since. Retailers realized that they can lure big crowds to their stores by offering ridiculously-low discounts, as a result, appealing to the public’s avarice. Experts also say that bargain sales like these aim to get people to buy the discounted products along with their everyday essentials; they are therefore spending more than they usually would. However, after wasting tremendous hours in queues and a phenomenal amount of petrol in traffic, the question lies, is it really worth it?

The American tradition has been warmly embraced by South Africans. A huge adoption of American retail trends are seen in South Africa today. They have been trialed and tested, proven to work and now embedded in South African minds. Dion Chang, an expert and founder of Flux Trends says and I quote “Africa has an hour glass economy – with the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer and the middle class being squeezed – people are going for deals just to make ends meet. For big and small businesses, this is definitely an opportunity for them to join and leverage this trend for their