Black Friday Is Now a Digital 'Hunger Games' for Retail
It's no longer so much about make-or-break doorbusters as stress-testing for the long haul.
This is what it's all about now.
Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images North AmericaHappy Day After Thanksgiving, a/k/a Black Friday, which was once one of America’s most important religious holidays. It’s been fading in relevance ever since people realized they could just buy discounted flat-screen TVs online instead of trampling other Walmart shoppers for them.
Black Friday doesn’t offer much information these days about how good the holiday shopping season will be for the industry or individual chains. But it may be even more Darwinian now, revealing which retailers have the digital chops to survive the holidays and beyond, Sarah Halzack writes. That's because Black Friday and the equally dubious shopping orgy known as Cyber Monday are when retailers’ modern weaponry is most put to the test: