Black Friday 2011 Gets More Stupid

Sales on Black Friday 2011 show consumers have a healthy appetite for deep discounted Christmas gifts. Thanksgiving sales hit record numbers with growing 39% over last year.

Xmas 2011 Sales Off To A Strong Start

According to Coremetrics, an IBM division that tracks over 500 leading US retailers.

• The US consumer spent on the average six items totalling $190.10 on Black Friday
• Online sales for Thanksgiving were up 39% over last year
• Online sales for Black Friday were up 24% over last year
• People are using their mobile devices, especially the iPad and iPhone, to shop
• Sales from the use of mobile devices to generate sales is 14% over last year
• Twitter and Facebook continues to flounder in generating sales, making up only 0.53% of total sales

Black Friday 2011 Videos

Look at this scene at a Oakland, California Wal Mart. Customers stand waiting for garbage bags full of discounted memory cards and cameras to be released at midnight. Notice the hordes of people in the store. When the bag breaks open, all hell breaks loose. Just crazy.

Here's a scene from a Walmart store in Porter Ranch, California. Sirens sound off in the background as a store employee with a bull horn calms down a crowd waiting for discounted video games.

Check out the long line snaking out of the parking lot at Best Buy in Dublin, Ohio.

Black Friday Thoughts

Has Black Friday come to the point where its gotten too crazy and insane to control? Why is it, in America, consumers choose to put themselves through this? It is such a sad reflection of America. I can't but help but think that other countries are laughing at us in how we choose to toy with the masses around Xmas time.

Black Friday has got so bad that people have lost their compassion for fellow man. Tv news station WSAZ in West Virginia reported that a 61 year old man died after collapsing on the floor in a Target store. Witnesses said that people continued to shop and even walked over the man's body. Truly disgusting.

A woman in a Los Angeles Walmart pepper sprayed 20 customers while trying to reach for an Xbox video game console. How crazy is that to have someone carry pepper spray to go shopping? Obviously that was pre-meditated. What's next? Shoppers carrying machine guns?

In Kingston, North Carolina, a security guard pepper sprayed customers during a fight while they waited to purchase discounted cell phones. A stupid cell phone. Imagine that.

Black Friday madness has gone too far. People are being exploited by working them up in a frenzy. It results in free publicity that hits every major and local media outlet that is great for big box retailers. Whats needed is local laws to enforce the number of people that can be inside a store - just like how there are laws against having too many people in a public place. It puzzles me why nobody has thought of this, let alone enforce it.

Another idea is to eliminate the mob size crowds in its entirety - no more lining up hours before opening and crashing the gates. Stores can issue online vouchers that are time stamped. Patrons can only enter into the store at their designated time to take hold of the product. Those who do not have a voucher, cannot enter into the store. Its just plain common sense.

One of these days, we are going to find ourselves with people getting killed stampeding over one another like a bull run in Spain.

About Kerry Kobashi

Kerry is the founder of KerryOnWorld. He lives in Silicon Valley and has worked as an engineer and project manager. He owns Kobashi Computing a consulting company.