An Analysis of Consumer Misbehavior on Black Friday

Abstract

Black Friday (BF), the day after Thanksgiving, is reported to be a day of both extreme bargain shopping as well as one of the busiest shopping days of the year. BF has become notorious in the media and general public for egregious consumer behavior. Research regarding BF remains relatively new and a focus on consumer misbehavior on BF is slowly growing. Utilizing two major theoretical perspectives (General Aggression Model and Stimulus-Organism-Response Model), the goal of the present research was intended to explore potentially influential personal and situational factors that affect consumer behavior on BF. From a survey of BF shoppers, in which four hypothetical BF scenarios were manipulated by two levels (goal blockage or goal fulfillment), we found that public self-consciousness and self-control are negatively related to consumer misbehavior and that the behaviors of fellow consumers and goal blockage evoke negative emotions. We also found that negative emotions are positively related to consumer misbehavior. Our results support the General Aggression Model in explaining consumer misbehavior on BF.