Thanksgiving is a holiday that is traced back to 1621, where the pilgrims celebrated the festival after a successful harvest feast that had followed the 1620 poor harvest.Since then,every year, the celebration is honored to give thanks to the almighty God, and people spend this time at home with their families, relatives, friends, and with the people, they care the most during this festival. Notably, over time, people have changed from the culture of spending their time together with their preferences for shopping.Apparently, stores open due to customers demand, pressure from other retailers, competitive advantage, and the expected volume of sales, cultural shift, and many other reasons. However, these seem problematic to some people, where everyone is supposed to spend their time with their families and most importantly havebreaks from their stressful jobs.
Retailers open their stores due to the nature of competitive advantage they likely to offer their competitors, hence, they prefer opening on Thanksgiving Day. Justifiably, opening during the festival gives multiple benefits such as making more profit and increase the volume of goods sold to the consumers. Furthermore, the pressure from other retailers is solely responsible for retailers’ operation. For instance, from online retailers (Conscore 2013), who tend to operate on a 24 hours basis every day.Besides, closing their stores in support of families spending time together is not guaranteed, as consumers are likely to go shopping elsewhere. Arguably, it is much better for retailers to open during this day for them to make that sale before their competitors do.
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Moreover, customers demand that the stores should be open for them to shop with their families conveniently.Precisely, at this time of the year retailers offers discounts on goods that are less likely tobe bought. Markedly, the discounts are offered on electronic items such as the Apple products, computers, TVs, smartphones, and wearable tech, which encourage people to go shopping in spite of the day being a holiday.Notably, most of these goods are expensive, which makes people wait until holidays to purchase them at lower prices.
However, the Thanksgiving holiday is more important to retailer’s employees than the profits they are bound to make from the sales because it gives them the much-needed breaks from the stressful jobs (Consumer search 2011). Hence, boost their morale, which, in turn, is likely to keep them motivated for longer periods after they spend quality time with their families.In essence, retailers should see the advantages and disadvantagesof operating on the eve of Thanksgiving.Besides, openingthe stores just to please their customers, and in the process ignore the unrests their employees may experience. For example, when the retailers are pushed to open early, which makes it difficult for their staff to spend and enjoy the traditional Thanksgiving dinner with their families.
Retailers should not allow their employees to be carried away by the change in cultural (Rhone & Stafford 2013), where employees have developed a work-driven mindset, which, in turn, has made them ignore the value of spending quality time with their families. The shift in culture has made people develop the motive to make more money at the expense of family values, where employees prefer working for long hours to earn more, in particular, the incentive and wages they are likely to be paidduring holidays. Some of the employee's group ranks themselves with similar lines as doctors and police officers who provide their services to the public irrespective of the occasions.
References
ConsumerSearch.com survey: Shoppers want stores closed on Thanksgiving. (2011). Health & Beauty Close - Up, Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/904165998?accountid=45049
ComScore releases U.S. desktop retail E-commerce spending figures. (2013). Entertainment Close - Up, Retrieved from
https://search.proquest.com/docview/1464832595?accountid=45049
Rhone, N., & Stafford, L. (2013, Nov 27). Black Friday brings a shift to retail and rituals on Thanksgiving day. McClatchy - Tribune Business News Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/1461853931?accountid=45049
