On the international stage, Thanksgiving is up there with baseball and the star-spangled banner as among the most instantly recognizable emblems of Americana by which the world identifies the United States.
Yet the majority of consumers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) will spend Thursday (Nov. 24) in much the same way as they spend any other day of the year — at work and without a turkey in sight.
The next day, however, Black Friday, has been exported across the region as merchants have jumped at the opportunity to generate a bit of retail excitement.
While Black Friday sales have been around for decades in the U.S., it wasn’t until the advent of eCommerce that they really started to kick off elsewhere.
In Europe, the tradition of retailers offering discounts on the last Friday of November first gained traction in the early 2010s thanks to the strong presence of U.S. retailers in the online space.
Other instances of American influence in the region have also helped to introduce European consumers to Black Friday. For example, Asda became the first major United Kingdom supermarket to offer Black Friday promotions in 2013 at a time when it was owned by Walmart.
Since then, the concept has continued to gather steam in the country where it is now an established fixture of the annual retail cycle.
Elsewhere in Europe, retailers have sought to make the shopping festival their own.
In Romania, for example, the country’s largest online retailer eMAG first imported Black Friday in 2011 but put a local twist on the event by running sales two weeks earlier than its American rival Amazon.
White Friday and Extended November Sales
The American tradition has also been adapted in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), where the phrase “White Friday” was coined in 2014 by the Syrian businessman Ronaldo Mouchawar, who co-founded the MENA-focused eCommerce site Souq.com.
Looking to replicate the success of Black Friday, Souq flipped the branding of the event to better align with the Arab culture of the region, where the color black has negative connotations and Friday is a day of prayer.
“We wanted to own an event that was not really tied to Thanksgiving as much but more tied to our Friday, our White, which is kind of positive and happy,” he told Newsweek in 2016.
When Souq.com was bought out by Amazon in 2017, the eCommerce giant recognized a winning formula in White Friday and continues to market the event as a regional variation of Black Friday.
In the years since Mouchawar launched the event, White Friday has grown in popularity and is now observed by retailers across MENA.
In 2018, Amazon’s biggest rival in the MENA eCommerce space, Noon, started its own Yellow Friday sale, named after the company’s signature yellow branding.
Read more: Is Amazon Looking to Take Out Noon in the Middle East?
Since its launch in 2012, the pan-African eCommerce giant Jumia has also run Black Friday promotions. Jumia’s Black Friday sale has evolved into a month-long retail extravaganza which this year kickstarted Nov. 4 and will run until Sunday (Nov. 27).
Speaking at a virtual press conference to announce the platform’s 2022 Black Friday event, Jumia Nigeria CEO Massimiliano Spalazzi said this year’s sales would help Nigerians fight against rising prices, with the campaign slogan “Beat Sapa” referring to the Nigerian Pidgin term that describes a state of poverty.
Up and down the EMEA region, retailers are hoping that interest in Black Friday will help bring in customers and drive sales growth at a time when consumer sentiment is dipping.
Ahead of the big day, retailers now run sales for a week or more in an effort to attract sustained interest. With Singles Day now also growing in popularity across the region, the second half of November has emerged as a critical period on the EMEA retail calendar during which businesses can generate a sizable chunk of their annual revenue.
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