This 2019’s annual Black Friday shopping took place on November 29th, right after the Thanksgiving holiday. The day kicks off the holiday season for companies and stores and marks the start of upcoming holiday sales and events.

The notorious day is known for numerous amounts of sales, deals, and discounts, leaving shoppers to anxiously wait for the once a year prices. Shoppers may even go to the extent of physically fighting for a discounted item or camp outside stores as early as 24 hours upon opening. 

However, over the past decade with the advancements in technology, sellers have seen a change in their consumer’s ways of shopping. This Black Friday, customers spent $7.4 Billion solely by online shopping, breaking the record from the previous year. Shoppers in the comfort of their own home now wait anxiously at their phones, computers, and tablets for the release of the sales. Online sales have increased from 20% since last year’s Black Friday and about 58 million people shopped online while 51 million people shopped in stores. 

Some companies have been struggling to accommodate to their customers and the way they are choosing to buy their favorite items. Unfortunately, because sellers like Kohl’s, The Gap, and Macy’s were not able to transition and adapt fast enough, their shares in the stock market have plummeted. However, Target and Walmart, have successfully transitioned and now offer a convenient and reliable online shopping option for their buyers. Target has seen a huge increase in its stocks as it rose 95% since last year. 

Black Friday is evolving overtime with the new upcoming generations of millennials and Generation Z who prefer online shopping. Only the future holds how each company will modify itself to this change and only time can tell which stores will survive. 

Zoya Barsik, a sophomore at Wayne Hills High School, thinks that “Black Friday is fun but it also takes away from Thanksgiving. No one really goes to stores at all anymore and most of it is bought online or on Thanksgiving day itself. It is fun to shop but it also is a little pointless considering nothing is left in stores after Thanksgiving day.”