Next Thursday November 25th, is the start of the American Thanksgiving Weekend. With all due respect to our Canadian Thanksgiving, the U.S. really do it right: Football games on Thursday night, and a massive “Black Friday” shopping bonanza: a long-weekend for most Americans.
both the largest travel weekend in the U.S., as well as the biggest shopping day. Due to a confluence of factors, this will be the 2nd year in a row that road travel and in person shopping will be down in the U.S.
On the shopping side, an astonishing 100 million American consumers shopped online last year on Friday. At the same time, there was a huge drop in in-person Black Friday shopping: only 59 million actual shoppers hit the stores. Perhaps this year, there might be more in-store shopping, given less restrictions, but it’s hard to imagine there will ever be a time again where in-person shopping will outnumber online shopping.
On the travel side, despite less travel restrictions, given the price increases of gasoline, just 32% of Americans plan to drive for Thanksgiving this year: gasoline prices are expected to be the second most expensive ever. By way of reference, last year 35% of Americans drove. As an aside, we can only look with envy, even as our neighbors to the south complain that as of November 18, their national average price per gallon of regular gasoline stood at $3.41, which works out to less than 90 cents/liter (compared to our current $1.45/liter CAD$).
Just another interesting reference point as to how behavior and consumer habits have shifted as a result of many factors: technology, Covid, and overall prices. One day, we will all be in our own Metaverse anyways, so this will all be moot!
One day, we will look back and laugh that we did this:
I’m not going to lie, I wasn’t up this morning for the longest partial lunar eclipse since 1440, when Henry VI was King, and the Inca Empire was expanding (but no one was shopping!). As we wish our friends in the U.S. a great American Thanksgiving next week, this “Beaver Moon Lunar Eclipse” can be considered Canada’s advanced thank-you: (LINK)!