Black Friday is the biggest retail store sale in the US; it signifies the beginning of Christmas shopping season. The popularity of the event has grown in the US and spread all over the world and it has now hit Home here in Kenya , before I get to that lets share little history on to why it’s such a big deal.
Black Friday happens on the Friday immediately after Thank giving which is on a Thursday, during thanks giving everyone travels home to have dinner with family most of us have seen or heard of it in the movies, and it usually brings massive traffic jams and over-crowded sidewalks.
Hence in the 60’s black Friday was associated with a lot of violence, robbery and traffic jams but a PR campaign for the adoption of a positive approach which would convert Black Friday and Black Saturday to Big Friday.
Black Friday is so successful that most retailer operates on a loss or breakeven from Jan to November and make their profits during this season. Back to Kenya, we need a PR Campaign for the whole ecommerce industry not necessary n annual sale but something that connects all of us and drives us to do a collective action online, deal won’t cut it we’ve had them long enough to know better, but if a deal tied to something with a psychological connection then we might be on to something, meanwhile ill just wait for the Jumia Black Friday offers and see how that pan out.
One Sam Gichuru wrote “There could also be the possibility that we are looking at the wrong place for this data, i.e government and NGO’s. Maybe we don’t need to go to big organisations but to smaller startups like Ma3route and look under the hood, what can their data tell us? Do they have less tweets mid month more tweets end month, What routes enlist more conversation, are the tweeps in public or private vehicles and what are their sentiments. We can even get to measure traffic mood.” we need to gather data from our day to day interaction , Mpesa, traffic, bank queues, Matatu rides and derive a relation that almost every Kenyan can identify with.