Small Business Saturday is a marketing initiative created and promoted by

American Express American Express Company or Amex is an American bank holding company and multinational financial services corporation that specializes in payment card industry, payment cards. It is headquartered at 200 Vesey Street, also known as American Expr ...

to encourage holiday shopping on the Saturday after Thanksgiving in the United States, during one of the busiest shopping periods of the year. This Saturday is always the last one in November, so it falls between November 24 and November 30.

History

First observed in the United States on November 27, 2010, Small Business Saturday is a counterpart to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, which feature big box retail and

e-commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) refers to commercial activities including the electronic buying or selling products and services which are conducted on online platforms or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile co ...

stores respectively. By contrast, Small Business Saturday encourages holiday shoppers to patronize brick and mortar businesses that are

small Small means of insignificant size Size in general is the Magnitude (mathematics), magnitude or dimensions of a thing. More specifically, ''geometrical size'' (or ''spatial size'') can refer to three geometrical measures: length, area, or ...

and

local Local may refer to: Geography and transportation * Local (train), a train serving local traffic demand * Local, Missouri, a community in the United States Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Local'' (comics), a limited series comic book by Bria ...

. ''Small Business Saturday'' is a registered trademark of American Express. The first event was created by American Express, in partnership with the non-profit National Trust for Historic Preservation, Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, and Roslindale Village Main Street. In 2010, the holiday was promoted by

via a nationwide radio and television

advertising campaign An advertising campaign or marketing campaign is a series of advertisement messages that share a single idea and theme which make up an integrated marketing communication (IMC). An IMC is a platform in which a group of people can group their ide ...

. That year Amex bought advertising inventory on

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, which it in turn gave to its small merchant account holders, and also gave rebates to new customers to promote the event. American Express publicized the initiative using

social media Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the Content creation, creation, information exchange, sharing and news aggregator, aggregation of Content (media), content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongs ...

, advertising, and

public relations Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing and disseminating information from an individual or an organization (such as a business, government agency, or a nonprofit organization) to the public in order to influence their perception. Pu ...

. Many local politicians and small business groups in the United States issued proclamations concerning the campaign, which generated more than one million Facebook "like" registrations and nearly 30,000 tweets under the

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

hashtags #smallbusinesssaturday and #smallbizsaturday.

Hashtag

The

hashtag #SmallBusinessSaturday has existed since early 2010 and was used to promote small businesses on any Saturday (not solely that Saturday between Black Friday and Cyber Monday). The hashtag is used in a manner similar to #FollowFriday to highlight favorite local businesses. Additionally, some small business owners have run marketing specials on the November Small Business Saturday to help capitalize on the boost in foot or online traffic, as most customers in this time period are actively shopping for the holidays.

Around the world

Small Business Saturday UK began in the United Kingdom in 2013 after the success of Small Business Saturday in the United States of America.

References

External links

Facebook page

US Small Business Administration
{{Christmas American Express Observances based on the date of Thanksgiving (United States) Retailing in the United States Small business Unofficial observances Saturday observances Recurring events established in 2010 2010 establishments in the United States

History

Hashtag

Around the world

See also

References

External links