Black Friday: more than a shopping spree

What began as an American shopping tradition has become a global commercial phenomenon. Black Friday, together with Cyber Monday, now stretches well beyond a single weekend, influencing consumer behaviour, corporate strategy and the investment landscape across retail, payments, logistics and technology. For investors, that makes it worth watching for reasons that go well beyond the bargains.

Black Friday originated in the United States, where the Friday after Thanksgiving became closely associated with the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. The expression itself is most commonly traced to Philadelphia in the mid-twentieth century, where it was used to describe the heavy crowds and traffic following Thanksgiving. The more appealing explanation that retailers moved from being “in the red” to “in the black” emerged later.¹

What started primarily as a American event gradually became an international one. E-commerce removed many of its geographical limitations, while Cyber Monday emerged in 2005 as an online counterpart. ² Today, the distinction between the two is increasingly blurred: promotions often begin well before the official Friday and continue beyond Cyber Monday. A shopping day has effectively become a shopping season.

Black Friday becomes Black November

Retailers are competing not only for customers, but for a finite share of household spending. Once one major retailer starts discounting earlier, competitors face pressure to respond or risk seeing consumers spend their discretionary budgets elsewhere.

The phenomenon is now deeply embedded in global e-commerce. Recent international surveys indicate that Black Friday participation is widespread, with 75% of global consumers making a purchase during the Black Friday/Cyber Monday period. Discounts and savings remain the primary purchase driver, cited by 71% of shoppers worldwide. ²

Technology has accelerated this transformation. Smartphones, digital wallets, price-comparison tools and, increasingly, artificial intelligence have made it easier for consumers to identify and compare offers. At the same time, retailers are leveraging AI to personalise customer interactions, refine pricing strategies and improve supply-chain efficiency. Together with advanced data analytics and dynamic pricing, these tools allow promotions to be adapted to demand, competition, inventory levels and customer price sensitivity. ³ Black Friday is therefore no longer simply a retail promotion. It has become a showcase for the infrastructure of modern commerce.

The economics of a bargain

From an economic perspective, Black Friday offers a particularly visible demonstration of price elasticity and intertemporal substitution.

Lower prices stimulate demand, but higher Black Friday sales do not necessarily translate one-for-one into additional consumption. Some households simply bring forward purchases they would otherwise have made closer to Christmas, while others substitute a discounted product for an alternative they might have bought at full price.

Headline sales figures are therefore an imperfect measure of economic strength. Strong spending can indicate resilient household demand, but it may also reflect earlier Christmas shopping or greater price sensitivity.

For companies, the distinction between sales and profitability is equally important. Heavy discounting can increase volumes and clear inventories, but it can also compress margins. Advertising, fulfilment, delivery and returns add further costs. A record Black Friday is therefore not necessarily a record day for profits.

For investors, what consumers buy, at what price and through which channel can ultimately be more revealing than the headline sales figure itself.

Why should investors care?

Black Friday provides investors with a highly visible, recurring test of both the consumer and the companies serving them.

Spending patterns can offer clues about the resilience of discretionary demand: are consumers still willing to make larger purchases, trading down towards cheaper alternatives, or waiting for deeper discounts? For companies, the event can reveal pricing power and operational efficiency. A business that requires increasingly aggressive promotions to sustain growth is in a different competitive position from one capable of maintaining demand while protecting margins.

Black Friday can therefore be viewed as a small annual stress test of the consumer economy, offering investors an additional lens through which to assess demand, pricing power and ultimately corporate earnings.

The businesses behind the basket

The investment implications extend considerably beyond the retailer offering the discount.

Every online purchase creates activity elsewhere: an advertisement may attract the customer, a platform facilitates the transaction, a payment network processes it, a warehouse prepares the order and a logistics company delivers it.

The effect on the wider e-commerce ecosystem can be substantial. During Black Friday week in 2025, one of the world's largest logistics networks recorded millions of deliveries worldwide and around 20% more international express shipments between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday.³

This creates exposure to several structural investment themes:

• Payments: Visa, Mastercard, Adyen

• E-commerce and platforms: Amazon, Shopify

• Logistics: DSV

• Retail: Nike, Walmart, LVMH

• Digital advertising and technology: Alphabet, Meta

The distinction between these groups is worth considering. Retailers generally need to offer the discount; companies providing the infrastructure behind the transaction often do not.

Payment networks can benefit from greater transaction volumes, logistics companies from additional parcels, advertising platforms from competition for consumer attention and e-commerce platforms from the continued migration of transactions online.

For investors, the most interesting exposure to Black Friday may therefore sometimes sit behind the checkout rather than on the shop floor.

Reading between the shopping bags

Black Friday should not be treated as a standalone investment indicator. A few weeks of promotional activity cannot determine the outlook for the consumer or the broader economy.

But it can provide useful signals. Strong volumes accompanied by limited discounting can indicate healthy demand and pricing power; strong volumes requiring unusually aggressive promotions tell a different story. Continued growth in online and cross-border purchasing can meanwhile reinforce longer-term changes in the way goods are bought and sold.

For investors, Black Friday is therefore best understood as a barometer of consumer confidence and economic sentiment. It sits at the intersection of several forces that ultimately influence corporate earnings and valuations: household spending, pricing power, margins, technological change and competition.

The bargains themselves may be temporary. What they reveal about consumers and the companies competing for them can matter for considerably longer.

Footnotes

¹ Associated Press, “What Black Friday's history tells us about holiday shopping in 2024”, 29 November 2024. 

² DHL, E-Commerce Trends Report 2025: Shopper Edit and Business Edit; DHL Group, “DHL reveals Black Friday trends: 84% of online retailers bank on sales surge”, 25 November 2025. Based on surveys of 24,000 online shoppers across 24 markets and 4,050 businesses across 19 countries.

³ Source: DHL Group, Black Friday week 2025: DHL delivers millions of parcels worldwide amid solid consumer demand, 2 December 2025