Black Friday Cascade
http://clavisinsight.com/news/predictions-black-friday-2016/
Thanksgiving is right around the corner, but to hardcore shoppers that also means that their biggest day of the year is coming up…Black Friday! The term Black Friday indicates the beginning of the holiday shopping season where major retailers open very early (even the day before) and offer promotional sales that attract customers to the stores from all over the world. In the past, shoppers would line up for 12 hours until the store opened, then would rush into the stores with excitement and adrenaline alongside with stress and sometimes even violence to get that best deal. Connecting this to class, an information cascade can be found within the minds of shoppers during Black Friday weekend.
Shoppers act as nodes and can decide whether or not they are going to physical go to the stores and shop on Black Friday. The links between the shoppers represent a decision to either go to the store or not go to the store. Take a group of friends for example who create an event on Facebook. They are all deciding whether or not to go Black Friday shopping and one’s decision will influence the others’ decision. At first, if only one friend has decided to go Black Friday shopping, the others would see that only one friend is going. But as more and more friends decide to go (or decide to not go) and broadcast their decisions, an information cascade occurs when enough friends make a similar decision to go shopping such that everyone’s decision is influenced along the way without the friends considering the actual event.
There are many factors that contribute to the decisions of shoppers that can lead to an information cascade. According to the article, over the past few years the rise of e-Commerce has changed the way shoppers have shopped on Black Friday. As more and more retailers advertise online shopping along with online-only sales via social media, shoppers are less inclined to go physically shop at the stores on Black Friday. For the group of friends who want to go shopping as described above, as long as enough friends can shop for the items they want online, this causes an information cascade as none of the friends will be going to the event, and thus others will not want to either. A threshold is met when more and more retailers offer online shopping, eventually offering all of the items that a friend wants to buy. Then the friend will not want to go out shopping at all anymore. Lastly, news about people getting hurt and fights breaking out over Black Friday can cause an information cascade as people will not want to go shopping anymore to avoid the dangers.