Travel, Black Friday and Consumer Confidence

NBC's Rory O'Neill reports on how much Black Friday has changed and how much people will spend this year

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Six forty six. On Wednesday morning, November twenty six, Mike Elliott,
Columbus This Morning News over to the Legacy Retirement Group
dot com phone lines, where we find birthday boy Rory O'Neil,
NBC News Radio. Happy thirty eighth birthday, Rory. I'm glad
you're having a good morning.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
I can't even remember my thirty eight, all right, sure.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
Well, happy birthday, my friend.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Where was I my thirty eight?

Speaker 1 (00:24):
So what's going on? This is a busy week travel wise.
It's also a busy shopping week too. Black Friday, which
I always kind of forget about because I don't necessarily participate,
but you know, people are watching their pocketbooks and you
know their dollars this year.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Well, look and Black Friday eighth what it used to be,
right when I was thirty eighth. It it used to
be the time, even as a reporter, we'd be out
at Circuit City interviewing the knuckleheads who've been sleeping out
for a week, waiting for some video game to come
out at midnight on Thanksgiving. But yeah, clearly the way
we shop has changed. Cyber Monday be a bit busier

(01:01):
than Black Friday with the way people shop. And remember,
cyber Monday was only a thing because we would use
the good internet at work, you know, both of us
at home only had dialogue, and that's why cyber Monday
became a thing thanks to the office. But they're still
expecting a gangbuster's holiday shopping season. More than a trillion
dollars is expected to be spent for the first time.

(01:23):
They've recorded that at the National Retail Federation.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
And there's a lot of a lot of retailers that
are actually closing for you know, Thanksgiving, because there was
a trend where people started to open up on Thanksgiving
like hey, you know what, do the dishes and clean
up after dinner and then go out shopping on Thanksgiving
and a lot of them that have sort of been
rolled back a little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
Yeah, a lot of that the retailers found out it
just really wasn't worth it. And then, of course, at
the same time, things were moving to more online sales.
But look, this also goes with the fact that you
used to go to the mall and the movie theater
at the mall would have big crowds for movies coming
out Thanksgiving Day, so you know, even the movies aren't
really what they used to be for Thanksgiving, so it's

(02:05):
all that stress point to have that one big night
to kick everything off. It's not really there anymore because
really Black Friday started in October when we had the
Amazon Prime Days, and that's really been now the real
kickoff to the retail season.