Retailers raise prices in months beforehand to make discounts look good
Black Friday is a complete scam based around the manifestly provable hoax that consumers are getting huge discounts on products that would normally be more expensive at any other time of year.
In reality, stores enjoy higher profit margins during the holiday period because retailers artificially inflate prices of goods in the months before Black Friday in order to make the subsequent discounts look good in comparison.
As Bloomberg Businessweek reports, “Among the 15 largest U.S. retailers, operating margins in the holiday quarter last year (2013) were 11 percent, compared with 9 percent in the preceding nine months. Amid the year-end shopping frenzy, these companies padded their bottom lines, on average, by roughly one-quarter.”
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Black Friday is entertaining, kind of like watching a low end national sporting event. The hype, the noise, the colorful commentary and an occasional fight.
ReplyDeleteAnd the occasional employee who gets trampled to death when they open.
ReplyDelete