Resource for journalists reporting on Black Friday | Press Releases

Image: G Cavallo Forget Black Friday, some retailers are kicking off the holiday shopping season on Black Thursday . Gerald O. Cavallo, Ph.D., associate professor of marketing at Fairfield University, said stores moving Black Friday up a day to Thanksgiving is indicative of retailers putting out all the stops this year. "Black Friday appears to be coming earlier and earlier as many retailers, competing for the limited consumer dollar, have already begun pre-Black Friday sales," he said. "A number of retailers have announced that they are going to hold Black Friday sales on Thanksgiving Day... There's a feeling that there's no time to waste."

Dr. Cavallo, who is a faculty member of Fairfield's Dolan School of Business, has written about building customer satisfaction strategically. "You are seeing a lot more 'Pre-Black Friday' sales and special hours announced."

Dr. Cavallo, who teaches "Sales and Sales Management" and "Principles of Marketing," said Black Friday has been the busiest shopping day of the year since 2005. "The origin of the term 'Black Friday' has been thought by many to refer to the day in which retailers turn a profit, or go into the 'black' for the year," he noted. "In actuality, the term 'Black Friday' was first used in 1966 by the Philadelphia Police Department to describe the shopping madness that disrupted the city center the previous year."

Black Friday falls this year on November 25.