Black Friday is the busiest shopping day of the year. Companies across the continent start the Christmas rush by promoting discounts and sales galore. The deals certainly are great, if you can fight through armed gunmen, shopping crazed people wielding mace, and of course giant crowds and lines. You know what would make Black Friday better, and probably much safer? Putting the sales online.
Some people might not mind the mall congestion that began last weekend and will continue for the next month, but I suspect most of us would prefer a quieter environment for shopping. Considering the stories this weekend about how troublesome Black Friday has been for shoppers, the question I find myself asking is: how long till these sales are online?
It wouldn’t take much. We already have online shopping. One potential pitfall is that some or all of the savings offered would be negated by shipping and handling, but who’s to say you need to have your purchases shipped to you? Stores could deliver your order, or you could pay online, reserve your item, and then head to the store to pick it up. You’d still have to stand in a queue, but at least you wouldn’t have to elbow someone out of the way to get your hands on the last iPhone 4S.
We can’t expect everything awesome to happen overnight, but businesses are trending towards cloud computing. Many are opting to use the cloud for their payment transactions, and many more are utilizing cloud services, like Microsoft’s Azure, to sell their products online. We might never be free of shopper-on-shopper violence, but we can at least be more sophisticated about it, and if you find yourself missing the rush of the Christmas rush, don’t worry, there will always be that last minute Christmas Eve flurry to get those last minute items.
Tags: azure, black friday, business, christmas, cloud computing, iphone, Microsoft