Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving in the United States and traditionally the biggest day of the retailing calendar. It is the day that heralds the beginning of the Christmas shopping rush and for many retailers and was the day that made their year financially.

It began in Philadelphia (there is no tax on clothes or shoes there) where thousands of people began lonely vigils outside department stores sometimes as early as 4am in order to bag the best offers in the sales and it quickly grew to encompass the whole of the continental US. But in recent years, the Black Friday phenomenon has been under threat by another perhaps even bigger wave of change - Cyber Monday.

For the last 2 years the Monday after Black Friday has seen the biggest amount of online shopping in internet retailing history and heralds yet another change in consumer trends. Many people have offered reasons why this has happened, the most popular being that Black Friday is seen now as simply the day for field research where potential presents are identified along with the price tag. Consumers then go online and find the same items for less and order them. Another possibility is that consumers are fed up with the physical hardship involved in fighting their way through crowds of shoppers when it is much more comfortable to sit at home and shop online instead.

Outside of the US the consumer retail trend has followed a slightly different path with many consumers eagerly anticipating the January sales period as their launch pad for a seasonal spend. But the January Sales trend has encroached more and more into December as retailers desperate to boost their sales figures look to stimulate business through offering discounts even before Christmas.

In both of these scenarios there is one constant ingredient that has genuinely swung the buying pendulum towards the online marketplace and that is the humble voucher code. Initially begun by a wine merchant via a genius marketing campaign that 'mistakenly leaked ' an online discount opportunity meant for only friends and family onto the internet, voucher codes have become common parlance in online retailing.

Who in their right mind would not take advantage of getting a discount when it is so easy to get hold of?. The secret of course is that you would not perhaps think of buying that product in the first place if it weren't for the offered voucher code. But this ease of access means that our traditional buying habits are under threat simply because we are now at the mercy of the voucher code system.

Smart retailers will now use our new found dependence to manipulate the buying cycles to suit their own agendas. So, does this mean that the traditional January sales are under threat? The reality is that we as consumers will ultimately decide where and when we want to spend our money, but in the short term we will be highly influenced by when the voucher codes are offered to us and if that means that we forgo January for December or February then so be it.

What is it about consumers who seem to be content with paying a premium for something new? It is as if we have been brought up to expect that old is cheap and new is expensive. We think nothing of paying hugely inflated prices for a product just because we want to be an early adopter and be able to impress our friends, or to be seen as keeping up with cutting edge new technology. It is almost as if we have come to terms with the fact that to be the owner of something brand new we have to be prepared to pay top prices for it. In America of course, this mindset is quite the opposite. Over there, they have been brought up to expect to get a discount on any new launch, after all, this would stimulate sales and provide the perfect platform to launch the product to market. You cannot walk into a store there without being bombarded by coupons for discounts. It is a fact that without an aggressive coupon strategy, many American business will fail to win new customers.

Are we then content to pay a premium for something that will inevitably become lower in price anyway once it is superseded by a seemingly better, faster, more efficient version? The answer is not any longer. Voucher codes have become big business and are now responsible for changing the way we purchase goods. A recent Experian survey showed that over 44 million of us scoured the Internet and entered or downloaded and printed out discount vouchers when going shopping. This is a rise of 23% percent over the same period last year. There are many factors for this growth, the largest of all being the power of social networking. Sites such as Face Book or MySpace have lit the touch paper on this phenomenon and it shows no sign of slowing down. Why? Simply because in these hard recession hit times, we are desperate for a way to save money, to rid us of the guilt of spending when we can least afford it. But the reality is that we are spending even more just because we feel we are getting a bargain and that is a dream scenario for the retail market. What better way to stimulate the economy than by offering us a discount. It is too tempting an offer to refuse, so we jump at the opportunity. More and more retailers are waking up to the fact that without a voucher code strategy in place they will fundamentally lose out in the race for customers.

Who benefits? Everyone. We have that essential purchase and feel good about getting it at a discount thanks to the voucher code we used and retailers are delighted with the growth of customer traffic. It is truly a win win scenario for the economy and with signs that the recession is finally on the wane, 2010 looks like being a very good year for all of us. Good for the economy? Undoubtedly.