How Retail’s Biggest Event Became a Disappointment

Black Friday has long been defined by massive crowds, rock-bottom prices, and rabid consumers ready to bite, scratch, and claw their way to the season’s best deals. But these days, retail’s biggest holiday looks a little different.

Stores are opening later, footfall is steady, online shopping is up and, in a world where Black Friday starts in September, consumers are wary, unsure if the deals they’re getting are really that good.

“The integrity of the event is basically gone,” said Mark Cohen, former CEO of Sears Canada, who spent a decade as director of retail studies at Columbia Business School. “Back then, Black Friday pricing was the best you could find on anything…and you’ll never see it again. Nowadays, promotional pricing gets better and better from a consumer perspective the closer you get to the holidays.”

Although Black Friday remains a crucial day for many retailers and remains arguably the most popular shopping day of the year, it is no longer defined by the in-person experience. Millions of shoppers are expected to visit malls, big box stores and specialty retailers on Friday, but millions more are expected to stay home and shop online from their phones and computers.

This means a change in strategy for retailers who have long focused on Black Friday, notably Walmart, Target And Macy’s. Some, like Kohl’s, launch their holiday sales earlier in the season. Others, like Walmart, space out promotions during separate events: one in mid-November, another over the holiday weekend, and a final one-day event on Cyber ​​Monday. Many others plan to remain closed on Thanksgiving but will still offer online deals during the holiday.

“I still remember standing in line outside stores waiting for the special deals that each retailer was advertising,” said Denish Shah, department chair and professor of marketing at Georgia State University’s Robinson College of Business. “Whereas now it’s spread out over weeks, over several days, and most of the time consumers are doing it from the comfort of their home through online sales.”

Over the past six years, more people have shopped online on Black Friday than in-store, and foot traffic has remained relatively stable after a post-Covid spike, according to data from the National Retail Federation and Placer.ai, an analytics company that uses anonymized data from mobile devices to estimate overall site visits.

Since 2021, Black Friday store visits have consistently been more than 50% higher than the daily average for the entire year, but the number of store visitors the day after Thanksgiving doesn’t really increase, according to data from Placer.ai.

From 2023 to 2025, the number of Millennials and Generation X consumers planning to make the majority of their purchases on Black Friday has declined. It’s largely flat for Gen Z and baby boomer buyers during this period, according to data from the Bank of America Institute.

Meanwhile, the amount of money people spend during what’s known as Turkey 5 — the shopping period that runs from Thanksgiving to Cyber ​​Monday — has declined for two years in a row, according to the NRF. Between 2019 and 2024, spending fell by almost 13%.

This decline is expected to continue this year, with consumers planning to spend 4% less on average during Turkey 5, according to a recent Deloitte survey.

“There will still be a day of highlights from retailers, whether it’s door raids, … some additional promotions, etc.,” said Tiffany Yeh, managing director and partner at Boston Consulting Group’s consumer practice. “But it’s more discreet.”

When the modern version of Black Friday was popularized in the 1980s, it took an entire year of planning to achieve it, Cohen said.

“The art was convincing a seller to give you a huge discount on price so that you could create this extremely attractive offer for the consumer that would then benefit you for the rest of the holiday season,” he recalls. “But it took a lot of work.”

Retailers had to choose the perfect product, set the ideal price, and make sure their competitors didn’t get wind of their promotional plans. Next, they had to make sure they ordered enough inventory to sell out, but not so soon that it would cause riots.

But over time, as Black Friday became more popular, retailers began extending the shopping holiday so that their biggest sales of the year could last longer than just one day. First, stores opened earlier Friday morning, then they started opening on Thanksgiving, and finally, promotions started the day before. When consumers began to expect discounts on more than a handful of products, promotions expanded to items across all departments.

“In other words,” Cohen said, “to stay the course, they started diluting it.”

As discounts spread throughout the store, the operational prowess behind inventory and staffing became even more difficult to manage, leading retailers to spread out promotions even earlier, Yeh said.

“It’s always been difficult to recruit so many staff in a short period of time,” she said. “If it’s just for one day, people won’t necessarily want to sign up for that, whereas if it’s for a longer season, then you’re more likely to have the necessary team members and be able to train them.”

At the same time, consumer habits have started to change.

Online shopping has been growing slowly and steadily for 20 years, but during the Covid-19 pandemic its adoption has skyrocketed. Now, retailers no longer need to put on such a big in-person show on Black Friday as online sales increasingly outpace in-store sales.

Expanding Black Friday into a season-long event also makes it easier for consumers to spread their own spending, Shah said.

“November and December are two different payment periods for many consumers,” he said. “It makes a difference if they can spread their expenses over two pay periods rather than just one.”

Of course, there’s also debate about how good Black Friday discounts actually are, especially in a soft economy where retailers rely heavily on promotions to drive sales while raising prices to offset tariffs.

“Widespread discounting” across the industry – before, during and after the holiday season – has left many consumers “skeptical” about promotions in general, said Sonia Lapinsky, head of the global fashion practice at consultancy AlixPartners. Some promotions this holiday season could also hide price increases, bringing the cost back to what it was before the ticket price increased, Lapinsky said.

“They had the power to cross-shop and seek out these discounts, and now there’s just this lack of trust,” Lapinsky said. “They’re tired of doing this, and there’s a lack of confidence that they’re actually getting value from it.”

For example, brands like Gap, Levi Strauss And Under Armor began its sales from Black Friday to Thanksgiving, and the promotions were comparable to those offered earlier in the season.

“The whole idea of ​​creating an emergency is kind of ridiculous and gone,” Cohen said. “Like so many headlines claiming to offer a deal, this one is somewhat of a scam.”