Black Friday
American tradition? Like no where else in da world!
Researchers find four themes about the Black Friday phenomenon.
- Familial bonding, multiple generations and close friends. It’s a group thing that could be good for everyone.
- Strategic planning, people target ads and, in turn, the stores to meet the market at the pass.
- The Great Race starts in the early morning hours of the Friday after Thanksgiving, the making of a fun frenzy.
- And, last is the feeling of mission accomplished, a reflection of how you did after the gut wrench of it all.
One of the hallmarks of psychological science is that we are influenced by the actions of others—often more so than we'd like to admit.
Social triggers play a role in the mob mentality that pervades Black Friday. That includes the concept of scarcity, the frenzy-inducing promise of ‘while supplies last.’ It turns Black Friday shopping into a physical and mental achievement, one that requires us to outwait, outwit, and outrun our fellow shoppers in order to win,or, in other words, buy something.
A marketing professor says she has always thought of it as a competitive sport. The scarcity primes a competitive motivation, people will go to absurd lengths to get the best deal or snap up something before others can get to it.
Consider how every holiday season the new hot toy becomes hotter and hotter as stores begin to run out.
Once people start running, everyone jumps in. It's the concept of social proof,
"If somebody else is in a hurry, there must be some urgency, so I should hurry, too".
And once everyone is running toward a same destination, the situation turns bad quickly. Research finds most crowd disasters aren't panics, as when everyone tries to flee a building. The majority of crowd calamities are associated with crazes, the phenomenon of everyone rushing toward the same one thing they all want.
Psychology Today
Psychology Today
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