What do you think of the expanded Black Friday shopping hours?

Online shopping is the way of the future. I buy almost all of my merchandise and gifts online and rarely do I ever even like to think about spending cash on anything. Nowadays the younger generation or “i” generation if you will is so intermingled with technology that most of these people shop online. As the older generations begin to dwindle out the amount of people that go out to actually shop on black Friday is decreasing. I would not be surprised to find out that the majority of people that shop in stores on black Friday will be older that those who shop online.

That said, in Apple Valley, both Walmart and Target parking lots were at overflow levels @ 9:30pm last evening.

While online retailers can be very inexpensive and easy to use, nothing beats going shopping on Black Friday. You can find great prices on expensive gifts and have a great time doing it with friends or relatives. I understand that online shopping is taking flight and will eventually turn into the shopping experience of the future, but Black Friday is just as big a part of Thanksgiving as the turkey itself.

Anyone who camps out overnight in a parking lot, or cuts their holiday short to go stand in line to shop, need to have a crainiogram. There is absolutely no reason for this; the same deals you found at midnight this morning will be available the week before Christmas. It’s all marketing brainwashing.

The world is complaining about our poor economy and jobs. Doesn’t black Friday directly affect both of these issues. I support it.

People want access to the limited stock at the good prices offered in Black Friday sales, so they will line up as early as the stores offer them. If stores opened at 9am, people would be there. But the earlier and more absurd the hours, the more stress on employees (and consumers) who have to deal with the extreme conditions. Merchants could get the same volume of sales (and cause less misery) if they offered the same deals at a later time.

I will not do it.

Each one to his own. I guess my time is worth more than that. So you save another $20 on a TV or another $100 total than you would by shopping in a week or two. These people are nuts.

Because you only buy Christmas stuff once a year, first one in gets the sale. Pretty soon, parents wont be trick or treating with their kids because they will be camping out at Best Buy to say $30 on something for their big “After Halloween Christmas Sale”. Then I believe we will be missing 4th of July Parades to get the Independence Day Pre Christmas Sale.

Get a life folks, relax with your family. Put the kids to bed a open another bottle of wine or another beer and enjoy one’s company.

I don’t shop Black Friday as I am a leisure shopper not a mob shopper. But I do wonder if all the companies like K-Mart and Best Buy and Wal-Mart – well I wonder if their CEO’s and CFO’s and the company presidents and vice-presidents and board menbers were working in the stores at midnight or 2 in the morning? Yeah, right!!!

And Gary F, you are right – soon the Black Friday may follow right after we put away the Easter baskets. If the retailers could figure out a way to sell stuff for Thanksgiving, like they have for Valentines Day, Easter, Halloween and Christmas – just think of all the Thanksgiving sales there would be Halloween night. Better get in line now!

I won’t support it. People who staff those stores have a right to celebrate holidays with their families. The practice of dangling a few loss leaders in order to gin up a feeding frenzy has resulted in violence in a few places, and for what? Stay home, enjoy your family, and let retail workers enjoy theirs.

Just another sign of retailers’/corporations’ greed, along with the desire of shoppers to get something they think is cheap and show off their cruel, bad behavior as reported today by a few of them. Another step in the direction of making any holiday just another day to try and make the almighty dollar. No one needs any of the stuff they are out trying to get…..we’d all be better spending our time serving and helping those who truly need the basics of life. It’s disrespectful of the hard work won by earlier people to even get a holiday away from work and regular routine.

I am so surprised to read all of these anti-consumer, anti-capitalism posts from so many “I support the Occupy Wall Street trashers and the ones who cry about Obama taking three years before he even began to address the 3.4 million out of work, which since he took office, another 2 million have lost their jobs.

And even sadder are the posted comments from MN atheists yet they_ have no problem putting blind FAITH into voting for our first mulato ( bi-racial) President who had NO history of work or accomplishments, not one accomplishment unless we call a ghost written book some how a big accomplishment for him?

Black Friday shopping spurs retail growth which spurs manufacturing and jobs. OWS protesters getting in the way of shoppers actually has cost tax payers 3 million across the country to clean up and police their useless movement, a movement, as I said months a go, turns out to be funded, materially supported and run and controlled by the extreme radicals that advocate to collapse the system by overwhelming it with entitlements. THAT goal is what these radicals have spoke of, their words yet so many don’t see anything except OWS students demanding a socialist “let government take care of me for ever” mentality.

Here are the OWS protesters demands”

1. Forgive our student loans..why should we pay back for our degrees in inane jobless fields we willing chose while the B.S. in engineering grads get all the jobs?

2. Give us guaranteed incomes regardless if we work or not, $20.00/ hr to hav a reasonable life style.

3. Support Obama’s pledge to tax everyone else..give us free healthcare and make doctors and nurses work for less, even if they_ paid back their student loans.

4. Demand Wall Street execs can not invest unless first ok’d by the White House.

These OWS class warfare moments are the ones used by our president to rally the misguided for his re-election.

The funniest part is there #6 demand:

“CONGRESS PASS SPECIFIC AND EFFECTIVE LAWS LIMITING THE INFLUENCE OF LOBBYISTS AND ELIMINATING THE PRACTICE OF LOBBYISTS WRITING LEGISLATION THAT ENDS UP ON THE FLOOR OF CONGRESS. Vote Here #6 (from OWS.com web pages.)

These fools have no idea how Obama appointed two campaign bundlers into the EPA for making the energy loans to who? Yup, to the same companies they used to work for and that had donated hundreds of thousands to Obama campaign. Wow….pay to play at work again but it is a good investment for those, they donate and get the free US Energy Dept.grants and guaranteed loans for useless companies, some of which were already about to go broke before they got the loans and grants. That free money boosted their stock price, some in Congress like D-Diane Feinstein bought in before the IPO release and made hundreds of thousands within days on these green failing companies. And Al Gore was another one, a former board member, who benefited $$$$ from these insider deals.

OWS should wake up and start protesting the real crooks at the White House but since the OWS people behind the scenes supported and organized this stuff, are in fact the same ones wanting to see America bankrupt to effect their idea of a New World order.Bush stated that desire in a speech in 2007 and Obama and Soros as well…read George Soros’ Open Society book. These are the radicals that openly supported Obama…HOPE and CHANGE…and what did that phrase really specify besides transparency that we never see in the White House? Exactly.

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@ jamie

//Nowadays the younger generation or “i” generation if you will is so intermingled with technology that most of these people shop online.//

Maybe you need to introduce your little ‘i’ to your big ‘I’ ; ) obviously you do not carry a credit card balance over into the next statement?

A youngster reported that she was able to purchase a top for less than $13.00 where it was regularly $40.00 by engaging in shopping from Thanksgiving into Black Friday. She said it was a gift. Here lies the next marketing strategy, which is guilting people into buying stuff and more stuff for each other at Christmas to prove-PROVE-that they value their friends and family.

I will say this, which is that I am truly horrified at the fact that the original mark up is so extreme that when merchants sell it for it’s real value, (with still a slight increase), they can still make a profit. Disgusting.

It is silly. Soon they will realize what they are doing is bastardizing themselves. How much earlier can they open? 7 pm on Thursday? 5 pm on Thursday? How about noon on Thursday? Perhaps 6 am on Thursday? Maybe midnight on Thursday? You get where I am going here? All they are doing is making cyber Monday look like a better option for everyone involved.

@kimMN

I think you’re a space alien. Can you prove you’re not?

Once again some low life without any backbone or character uses my name to post on something about Pepper spray..probably was posted from some OWS paid Progressive as usual..sigh.

Karen Howel wrote the same class war fare stuff we have come to expect from the Rules for Radicals handbook by Saul Alinsky.i.e.,” Congress isn’t going to do anything except support lower taxes for the rich–who aren’t creating any jobs that I’ve heard about!!!!”