Wal-mart Claims Black Friday Circulars are Copyrited Materials
The Friday after Thanksgiving is known in the retail world as Black Friday. It is called Black Friday because this is the day retailers are supposed to finally show a profit for the year after treading water for about 10 months. The age of the internet has let many websites to discuss the various deals and offers for Black Friday. Retailers like Target, Wal-mart, Best Buy and other major retailers don’t want the web sites to talk about and show the sales circulars and claiming the materials are copyrighted. I cant imagine that you can copyright what is effectively a price list. As far as I am concerned the main reason the retailers don’t want these items and prices to be discussed, is that the deals are not good. Certainly not worth waiting in line from 4AM in the morning for some bare bones laptop deal from one of these sellers. I don’t get very excited about some movie DVDs at 5.00 each either. I have often found similar or better deals online, and I don’t have to wait in the huge lines. The past few years retailers have not seen the frenzied buying as maybe 10 years ago. Again this is due to the internet and the simple fact the deals are not that great and there are not any red hot items this year. Some years there is a very hot toy or electronic product to drive traffic. Cheap DVD players are such are tired products that everyone has. The public knows that the last minute deals can be very lucrative so there is no reason to get in the huge lines on hat may be a cold fall morning. I live in South Fla so it could be 100 degrees. I have been in Best Buy on Black Friday. usually there is mayhem and they rarely have the ability to move shoppers through the lines. I think sometimes there is an excitement factor about Black Friday. I am not impressed by bully tactics the retailers have attempted to stop the talk. I will follow this up as some of the deals “leak” out. On these Black Friday deals you never see Ipods of such deals. Those are always offered at full price in a color circular saying hot deal. Another thing the internet has done is slow sales on the Sunday color circulars. Many times I see items offered at full retail. There is no sale? Why buy? And stay away from those extended warranties.
Tags: black friday, holiday shopping, holiday shopping deals, walmart
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October 22, 2007 at 6:45 pm
I have read the actual letter sent to the BlackFriday web sites. The Black Friday Web site: BFads.net has it posted in a PDF format for all to read. The question is, will the other big name stores follow Wal-Mart strategy in preventing black friday postings leaks? I would think Wal-Mart and the other Stores benefits from the free publicity that these black friday sites give them.
October 25, 2007 at 1:10 pm
That’s Copyright, as in right-to-copy, not Copywrite, as in write a copy.
November 4, 2007 at 2:19 am
Wal-Mart and the other Stores do benefit from the free publicity
that sites like BFads.net give them. Also thank you and BFads.net for letting us see the actual letter sent from Wal Mart. I know a lot of people who wanted to see the letter for themselves.
November 4, 2007 at 1:56 pm
Tim- I agree. The publicity Wal-mart got this week with the advance deals got them a huge amount of publicity on all sorts of media and websites.
November 5, 2008 at 4:43 pm
In search of the perfect “Black Friday” shopping nightmare story, the New York Daily News is playing this one for all it’s worth: a story about shopper rage at a Circuit City store in Rego Park,…