Black Friday
Black Friday – sostantivo
Last year’s Black Friday saw shoppers in the UK fighting over bargains, websites crashing and delivery companies struggling to cope.
Black Friday UK 2015 is here this year it’s less about punching another shopper and more about finding deals online.
The retailer widely recognised for making Black Friday mainstream in the UK has turned its back on the event this year and will not be participating.
Il Black Friday, la giornata di sconti e offerte speciali, è un’usanza americana che risale almeno agli anni ’30. Per negozi e aziende rappresenta l’opportunità di spingere la gente a fare acquisti all’indomani del Thanksgiving, il Giorno del Ringraziamento, che cade sempre il quarto giovedì di novembre. Come spiegarne l’adozione nel Regno Unito e in molti altri Paesi europei, tra cui l’Italia, se non con il progresso inarrestabile della globalizzazione? Non a caso dietro l’idea del Black Friday come giornata di sconti pazzi ci sono colossi della distribuzione mondiale quali Amazon e Walmart, con la complicità dei media.
Origini del termine
Il Black Friday prende il nome dal traffico congestionato dovuto agli acquirenti a caccia di offerte e occasioni speciali. Di solito, i giorni definiti black sono giornate funestate da crisi o disastri, soprattutto economico-finanziari, dal Black Thursday e Black Tuesday che segnarono l’inizio della Grande crisi del ’29 fino al Black Monday del 1987 quando crollarono le Borse valori di tutto il mondo. Strano dunque che un tale epiteto sia attribuito alla giornata che dà inizio alla frenesia degli acquisti natalizi.
Black Friday – noun
Last year’s Black Friday saw shoppers in the UK fighting over bargains, websites crashing and delivery companies struggling to cope.
Black Friday UK 2015 is here this year it’s less about punching another shopper and more about finding deals online.
The retailer widely recognised for making Black Friday mainstream in the UK has turned its back on the event this year and will not be participating.
Black Friday is an American thing. Dating back at least to the 1930s it’s a way for businesses to get people shopping the day after Thanksgiving, which is always the fourth Thursday in November. So how do we explain its very recent import into the UK, where the Friday after Thanksgiving is just an ordinary working day? The explanation, it seems to me, lies in the increasingly global nature of business and culture; and indeed the idea of Black Friday as a day when consumers can snap up bargains has been driven by firms such as Amazon and Walmart that trade on both sides of the Atlantic and fuelled, of course, by the media.
Origins
Black Friday started to be known by that name as an allusion to the traffic congestion caused by bargain-hungry shoppers. Days that are given the epithet black tend to be days of disaster, especially financial, from Black Thursday, the start of the Wall Street crash, to Black Monday, the day in October 1987 when stock markets around the world plummeted. This makes it all the odder that it should be applied to a day when retailers hope to kick-start the Christmas shopping frenzy.
