A month and a half after their Canadian counterparts, Americans are celebrating Thanksgiving this week – spending time with loved ones and giving thanks for what they have. But many are also thinking about the things they don’t have, and plotting their strategies for the day that follows – Black Friday.
For many Americans, the day following Thanksgiving has come to mark the beginning of the holiday season – a distinction embraced by retailers who go out of their way to offer deep discounts and massive sales in an effort to lure shoppers to their stores.
Though this consumer tradition doesn’t play out the same way in Canada as it does south of the border, Black Friday does have an analogue in our country’s Boxing Day; when it is just as common to find shoppers lined up for hours in hopes of grabbing some great deals.
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But Black Friday seems to march further northward each year, and this year a number of big retailers say they’ll offer some of their biggest discounts of the year this weekend, to coincide with the both Black Friday and Cyber Monday (the Monday following Black Friday, when online retailers often hold large sales).
Among stores planning sales this weekend are Best Buy, the Body Shop, Canadian Tire, Chapters and Indigo, Future Shop, the Gap, Lululemon, Sears, Walmart and Zellers.
But experts say Canadian stores probably won’t be discounting quite as aggressively as U-S chains, where Black Friday deals sometimes cause stampedes, fights and in some extreme cases, even deaths.
For those hoping to take advantage of the deals that are offered, the users of online shopping forum redflagdeals.com have compiled a list of some of this year’s biggest Canadian Black Friday bargains.
With files from the Canadian Press.
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