Few Black Friday shoppers will actually set foot in stores this year
Though Canadian retailers are doing their best impression this year, Black Friday has always been a kind of foreign curiosity for shoppers north of the border.
While the madness erupts in the U.S., we watch with our noses pressed to the glass.
How on earth could people brave the lines, we think, or risk getting trampled or tasered just for a hundred bucks off a no-name flat-screen TV?
Perhaps, though, Black Friday has peaked as an in-store event, and the online deluge will mean many shoppers taking part in the holiday spending spree will no longer need to actually set foot in a store.
This year, retailers are ramping up their Black Friday efforts, opening their doors as early as 8 p.m. Thursday night.
*Bing: The best Black Friday deals this year
But a new survey suggests besmirching the actual calendar day of Thanksgiving won’t move the needle for plenty of shoppers, who have no intention of visiting any retailers in the physical sense.
According to a poll from market research firm DealNews, 53 per cent of shoppers said they’ll do their Black Friday shopping mostly online, while 28 per cent said they’ll do it online only (17 per cent said they’d do it mostly in-store; just two per cent said they’ll do it exclusively in-store.)
Those scoring at home won’t find it difficult to read between the lines. DealNews’ poll seems to show that eight in ten shoppers searching for Black Friday deals will do their best to avoid stores altogether.
Of course, in the U.S. it’s easy to do so. Online retailers like Amazon have rolled out Black Friday deals the entire week of American Thanksgiving, and even the Walmarts and Sears’ – traditionally brick-and-mortar stores – have improved their e-commerce offerings greatly.
For Canadians looking to get involved in online Black Friday shopping, it’s not impossible, if you’re willing to do a little legwork.
All you’d need is a U.S. shipping address and you’re in. This could be any address, though most likely it’d be a P.O. box service that you’d have to drive down to claim your shipped goods from.
By Jason Buckland, MSN Money
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