By Marianne Wilson

(November 25, 2009) With Friday set to kick-off the annual holiday shopping frenzy -- and a consumer -spending comeback beginning to appear -- a host of widespread myths have come to surround the shared cultural phenomenon of Black Friday. As a public service to explode the popular myths, the retail consulting and research firm Customer Growth Partners, based in New Canaan, Conn., has released its annual “Cognoscente’s Guide to Black Friday.”

Myth 1: Black Friday is the busiest shopping day of the year. Wrong, according to Customer Growth Partners, which says the heaviest shopping day of the year is almost invariably the last Saturday before Christmas.

“The only exception is when the last Saturday falls on Dec. 24, when people -- except for tardy Dads -- are traveling to family gatherings, at church services or preparing holiday dinners. So this year the busiest shopping day will be Saturday Dec. 19,” explained Craig Johnson, president, Consumer Growth Partners.

Myth 2: “Cyber Monday” is the busiest e-commerce shopping day of the year. This newly created “day,” dreamed up by the e-retail industry, has never been the busiest e-commerce day of the year, and will not even be among the top three e-commerce days in 2009, Johnson said. Rather, the busiest e-commerce day is almost always the last day of free shipping by Amazon in time to arrive by Christmas eve, a cutoff date that in 2009 falls on Dec. 17.

“The second busiest day is typically the Monday just prior to the cut-off date, when people can either shop from home or their office,” Johnson added. “This year, a number of major retailers are encroaching Thanksgiving with a variety of “early Black Friday” online specials, and it is possible that this Thanksgiving may itself be a bigger e-retail day than the ersatz “Cyber Monday.”

Myth 3: Nov. 27 will kick off Black Friday, often as early as 4 a.m. or 5am. Wrong again, Johnson said.

“Black Friday will actually kick off at 9 p.m. this Thanksgiving night at the nation’s largest premium outlet mall, New York’s Woodbury Common, when stores from Coach and Gucci to Ugg open their doors ahead of the “official” mall midnight opening,” he explained. Laggers such as Aeropostale, Gap and Ralph Lauren won’t open until 10 p.m.”

Myth 4: This year, retailers will run out of many hot items in short supply. With rare exceptions, virtually all major retailers will have sufficient inventory in stock to serve demand, including the most popular gifts. A few new products, such as Barnes & Nobles’ new Nook eReader, are in true manufacturing-constrained short supply. But other items, such as the Zhu Zhu pet hamster, face no major manufacturing constraints -- and are being artificially supply-constrained to hold up prices, the same way Pet Rocks were in the 1970’s.

Meanwhile, the most popular gifts -- still sweaters, TV’s and now smartphones -- are all in wide supply from multiple sources.

Myth 5: Limited quantity doorbusters are due to limited supply. “This is totally bogus,’ Johnson said. “When you see an ad from Sears trumpeting Black Friday doorbusters, and the fine print says there may only be three or four of the Samsung TV or Kenmore washer/dryer in stock, it’s not because Samsung or Kenmore was running short of supply. It’s because Sears wants to bait customers with a doorbuster price, then switch them to another model -- or at least get them in the store at 5 a.m. -- leaving the millions of people who saw the ad disappointed. This is not the ideal strategy to win customers and build goodwill.”

Myth 6: Holiday 2009 will be another lousy Holiday season for retail. Compared with last year when the economy was in freefall, most astute retailers will see positive, but not stellar, year-over-year growth this season, Johnson said. 

“But the real story for retailers this year is the exceptional earnings leverage they will enjoy with even a slight uptick in sales--after a year of cutting costs and trimming inventories -- and many will enjoy robust, if not record, fourth-quarter earnings,” he added.

Myth 7: Black Friday is when retailers break into profitability for the year. In fact, unless you are in the toy or jewelry business, well-run retailers should be profitable in every quarter of the year, Johnson said.

“If you’re running a retail business that doesn’t make money every year until Black Friday, you should be fired by the next Friday,” he added.