Consumer preference is shifting away from brick-and-mortar stores. Based on initial figures, more of us are doing our Christmas shopping online. A survey taken the Sunday after Thanksgiving by the National Retail Federation “found that more people shopped online than in stores during the Thanksgiving and Black Friday weekend, a sign of how quickly and deeply American shopping habits have changed.” Not only are large retailers like Wal-Mart and Target changing their marketing strategy, but online travel sites such as Expedia and Travelocity “are offering Black Friday and so-called Cyber Monday deals, travel discounts offered in limited quantities for a short amount of time.”
Interesting as these changes are, there is more going on here than just an increase in consumer preference to do their Christmas shopping online. There is a readjustment according to the expressed morality of American shoppers. The whole idea of “Black Friday” — along with and especially its antecedent Black Thursday (Thanksgiving) — is losing its grip on shoppers’ imaginations (and wallets). And this, as the Manhattan Institute’s Nicole Gelinas writes, “is good news. People aren’t as stupid as retailers think they are. They saw the artificially created stampedes for a piece of plastic that their kids will have broken or forgotten about in a few weeks, anyway — and they said no.” As she writes in “America Has Wised Up to the Black Friday Con,” Gelinas observes that “Americans have mounted ‘Boycott Black Thursday’ movements on social media, shaming stores that stay open. Last year, one of the biggest such sites garnered 100,000 Facebook likes, and savvy store executives have absorbed the message.”
Now instead of advertising that they will be open Thanksgiving evening (or afternoon) for the convenience of their customers, retailers are telling us “not to buy stuff. Or, at least, to spend a day not buying stuff.” A diverse group of retailers including DSW, T.J. Maxx, Marshall’s, Apple, Costco, IKEA, Nordstrom, Sam’s Club, and Staples announced that they would “be closed on Thanksgiving.” These and other retailers explained their decision, as DSW explained in its ad, because “family time is extremely important to us, and we want our associates to enjoy the holiday with their loved ones.”
It’s easy to dismiss all this as simply corporate expedience in the face of waning consumer desire to shop in brick-and-mortar stores. Or maybe retailers have realized how deep and broad is shoppers’ disapproval of aggressive marketing campaigns that turn Christmas shopping into gladiatorial combat. While we shouldn’t discount the former, I think we find the seed of the explanation in the latter.
Consumer disapproval of Black Friday has caused a drop in demand. Consequently, retailers have curtailed their investment in these kinds of sale events. If economics is agnostic as to what motivates the change in demand, then as a Christian, I can’t be. Retailers are responding to the moral cues of shoppers and so changing their marketing strategy to conform to the moral demands of consumers.
While there is bad behavior at these sales, when I've gone to the mall near my house the shoppers I’ve seen have usually been polite — even if tired. Rather than fighting to get a deeply discounted TV, they exchanged information about sales and traded coupons with each other. While the excesses surrounding Black Friday should be criticized, most people approach the day with good will and even charity. Listening to the (primarily) women who shop, I’ve come to appreciate that for many it is a chance to bond with other women and get a jump on Christmas shopping for their loved ones. There is a real sense of fellowship (or maybe sorority) among the shoppers.
Appreciating the positive as well as negative elements of Black Friday is critical for helping us understand the moral goodness of a market economy. It is only in this light that we are able to identify and correct its moral failures. Unlike top-down, command-and-control approaches like socialism or crony capitalism, the market economy responds to what people actually want. This means that retailers who wish to make a profit must be sensitive and responsive to consumers’ moral concerns. This is why retailers’ deference to consumers’ morality doesn’t surprise me; it’s how the market works. The real question is not does morality inform the market but whose morality informs the market.
The sanctification of our economic life is central to fulfilling Jesus’ command that Christians “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature" (Mark 16:15, NJKV) and “make disciples of all the nations” (Matthew 28: 19, NKJV). This means that Christians must be clear in our own minds, and bold in our proclamation, that the freedom of the free market is not simply the negative freedom of minimal government regulation. True economic freedom requires the cultivation of what the classical Western moral tradition calls the cardinal virtues. And these virtues — prudence, temperance fortitude and justice — must in turn be guided by the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity. Any Christian unwillingness to engage both the moral goodness and the moral failures of the market means we risk failing in our obligation to take captive our economic life for Christ (see 2 Corinthians 10:5).
