Changes

By the early 2000s, Black Friday sales led more stores to move their opening times to be earlier. Some of the earliest are around midnight, while others open around 4 or 5 AM (Figure 2). However, other stores have increasingly moved their Christmas shopping offerings to a much earlier date, some starting as early as the day after Halloween. The phenomenon of Christmas creep, as it is called, has become widespread. In recent years, deep discounts on electronics and traditionally more expensive consumer goods have led to shoppers camping out in front of stores during the Thanksgiving holiday or even before then. In some cases, it has even led to violence between shoppers who compete with each other to purchase limited goods given at deep discounts. Since the 2000s, American companies, including Amazon, have started marketing Black Friday deals in their international outlets. While countries outside of the United States do not celebrate Thanksgiving, countries in Europe, North American and even east Asia began adopting either Black Friday as a discount day for Christmas shopping or even used the week of Thanksgiving as the beginning of promotions. At times, the term itself has been changed or adapted to local language and tastes. Even in the UK, Black Friday was a term used for the Friday before Christmas. In that case, it was a term used by hospital and emergency personnel who had to deal with a large increase of patients received before Christmas due to many party goers and drunk behaviour increasing workload for such personnel. In other countries, where Christmas is not a major holiday, such as India, retailers have attempted to replicate the idea of Black Friday around days preceding major holidays such as Diwali.<ref>For more on recent developments of Black Friday, see: Hoyer WD, MacInnis DJ and Pieters R (2013) <i>Consumer Behavior</i>. 6th ed. Australia ; Mason, OH: South Western Cengage Learning, pg. 323.</ref>