Black Friday | featured news

If you’ve shopped for a TV in the past couple of years, chances are you’ve heard of Vizio. After all, the company, a decade old this year, has been holding its own in the US TV market against global giants like Samsung and Sony while at the same time expanding into new products like PCs and tablets. Impressive no doubt, even more so considering the company does all this with just 400 employees. At $3 billion in annual revenue, this translates to about $7.5 million per head, a number that’s over ten times that of Sony. That’s an amazing degree of productivity, especially for a company that has in no way taken the easy path of shipping me-too boxes, but instead has been one of the most progressive in adopting new technologies for the TV market such as new interfaces and smart TV.

With so much consumption going on, giving back can easily be overlooked. The 92nd Street Y in New York hopes to change that with its social media movement #GivingTuesday. #GivingTuesday is not a charity drive to benefit one cause but a call for many organizations and individuals to give to those less fortunate during this time of year, say its organizers. Retailers around the country will host donation drives in stores on Tuesday. Meanwhile, participants with an online presence are soliciting charitable contributions from their social media followers.

Sales on the day after Thanksgiving fell from those a year earlier, after stores started their “doorbuster” promotions early in the week and opened for business on Thursday evening.

The Black Friday shopping weekend apparently took a tragic turn early Sunday morning when an alleged shoplifter died while being apprehended by employees outside a Lithonia Walmart.

Black Friday retail sales online this year topped $1 billion for the first time ever as more consumers used the Internet do their early holiday shopping, comScore Inc said on Sunday.

As you may have seen if you've visited Apple's (AAPL) online store today, the company is offering some modest discounts for Black Friday here and there, nothing huge. Macrumors's Arnold Kim has the lowdown on which things are cheaper.

Put down that turkey leg. It's time to shop. No, really. Stores typically open in the wee hours of the morning on the day after Thanksgiving known as Black Friday, named for the period when stores traditionally turn a profit for the year.

An estimated 147 million Americans plan to go shopping sometime this weekend, according the National Retail Federation. But who are these people, what's the psychology driving them to rise before dawn in pursuit of a deal -- and have they really never heard of online shopping?

Some day in the future, anthropologists may be able to explain the bizarre shopping rituals of the 21st Century American consumer during the holiday season: Why, for example, so many people look for bargains on one day – Black Friday – when with a little work bargains can be found on the other 364. Or why they stand in midnight lines in bleak winter weather only to risk stampedes and fight each other for cheap gifts.

From Los Angeles to Tampa, shoppers are already camping out in front of big-box retailers, determined to be among the first in line for door-buster deals. In Los Angeles, some hardcore consumers have been in line since last Monday, even taking vacation from work in order to save big money. An estimated 147 million Americans will take advantage of Black Friday sales, 4 percent more than last year.