Shop 'til you drop
If you're wondering how retailers can afford to shave whopping amounts off hundreds of items in an economy that has already taken a rather severe beating, put it down to a rock solid faith in herd mentality.
This is because retailers can easily afford to take losses on certain "great bargains" - usually offered in limited quantities - only to make it up by selling higher than normal volumes of crap at or above the normal retail value.
But overall, sales on Black Friday were only marginally up this year compared with last year, with total spending reaching $10.66 billion, an increase of only 0.5 per cent according to ShopperTrak.
The research outfit also said Nintendo's Wii game console, Garmin's GPS phone and Apple's iPod were the three most popular products this year for crazed consumers.
For those who missed out on the retail roadkill, not to worry, the US marketing machine has come up with another made-up holiday for punters to flash their cash; Cyber Monday, billed as the biggest online shopping day of the year.
According to Shop.org, the online arm of the National Retail Federation, which kicked off the whole "Cyber Monday" concept back in 2005, over 83 per cent of major online retailers are offering some kind of promotion for the more tech savvy, less-inclined-to-sleep-on-the-pavement crowd.
As impressive as that may or may not be, whilst sales do tend to be higher than normal on both Black Friday and Cyber Monday, there's plenty of evidence to suggest that e-commerce as well as brick and mortar establishments continue doing fairly well all the way up to Christmas day.
God bless ye lazy shoppers and holiday procrastinators - just don't skimp on shipping if you want to get the gifts under the tree.
