So here I am, an avid shopper in the land of shopping, ready to tackle the biggest shopping weekend in the United States.

Of course, I am talking about Black Friday, the day that follows Thanksgiving.

I have always tried to hit the stores when I am in the U.S. This is partly because I am taller and my feet are larger than the “average” Korean female, making it a challenge to find anything that fits me in local department stores. But honestly, the shopping experience is beyond compare. In the U.S., you get more choice, less crowding, and if you are a smart shopper like me, you never need to buy anything at full price.

When I last lived in the U.S. in the 1970s, there was no such thing as Black Friday, which is probably a good thing since my late mother was the queen of queens of bargain shopping.

But Wikipedia tells me that the concept started in the 1980s, and the “black” in Black Friday is represents the fact that retail sales made in the weekend after Thanksgiving is typically what takes retailers from “red” to “black” in their accounting books. These days, if you didn’t make it to the stores on Black Friday, there is also Cyber Monday, which means you can continue to shop for bargains online the week after.

All week, I have been inundated with advertising that emphasized the tremendous deals that will be offered, as well as the fact that Black Friday actually will start earlier, on Thanksgiving or even earlier. “Forget the dishes! Shop the Black Friday deals!” says one department store ad.

So you can imagine my excitement as we cleared away the Thanksgiving dinner and prepared to join the holiday shoppers.

But we finally decide not to brave the late-night cold (I was in Baltimore with my sister), but head to the shopping centers early the next morning. So come 6 o’clock Friday, we set out for the Black Friday experience.

But I was not prepared for the amount of people out on the streets and in the stores at that ungodly hour. Now I do not know if the deals were that extraordinary, and some media outlets claim the sales were only slightly better than normal, but it was evident that consumers were enjoying the holiday shopping.

Wearing what could only be described as upgraded pajamas, their faces were flushed with the excitement of bargain buys, details of which they insisted on sharing with everyone in the mile-long lines at Starbucks. .

The merchants seemed pretty excited as well. More than a few young salespeople were dancing in the entrances to the various shops, enticing the early morning shoppers to enter. And the sales clerk who told me she had been working since four in the morning was as cheery as could be and looking forward to doing her share of Black Friday buying.

And so I realized on that shopping extravaganza weekend that the magic of shopping in the U.S. was not just the sales or the merchandise, it was the marketing effort that companies put into making buyers feel “special.”

The elderly flight attendant on Southwest Airlines, the U.S. carrier I used in the flight from Los Angeles to Baltimore, burst into a Christmas carol over the intercom while we were waiting to deplane at our destination. She was no opera singer, but everyone clapped anyway and we didn’t mind the wait so much. On the way back, another elderly flight attendant did the entire 5 hour trip wearing a hat shaped like a turkey ready to be carved. It seemed ridiculous at first, but as I got off, I told her I thought the hat was fabulous. I am ready to hop on Southwest again any time.

The mindset of the companies and the service staff that put the needs and the pleasures of their customers first, really shine in situations like Black Friday, where all retailers are out on the playing field, competing for consumers sleepily wandering the shopping malls or lazily browsing through the internet.

And this kind of thinking is not limited to the retail industry. While in the East Coast, we took a trip up to New York. In front of Rockefeller Center, we stopped in front of a Salvation Army’s red pail, which looked just like that on the streets of Seoul … but with a difference. The man ringing the bell was also dancing non-stop.

The man’s moves were so energetic and joyous that we almost felt like dancing along (an impulse quickly suffocated by our years of Korean modesty). Of course, we took pictures and made a small donation. The next day, I happened to hear the Salvation Army spokesman explaining on TV that many of the organization’s bell-ringers were putting on a performance around their red pail. “At this time of year, there are many organizations that are calling for people to express their generosity,” he said. “We have to go the extra mile.”

If even a charity organization is willing to work for the attention of the consumer, then this is truly is a shopper’s paradise.

It shows that in order to capture a share in this competitive market, it is not enough to have a good product, good design, or even a good marketing plan. It is a stewardess willing to be laughed at to entertain flyers during a long flight, a cashier that will forget her tired and swollen feet to cheer you on at 6 a.m. It may be that small difference that is somehow absent from the shopping experience in Korea, and from the marketing attitudes of Korean companies.

Anyhow, that kind of pampered feeling had a lot to do with me thinking that my very first Black Friday experience was totally successful. And that I needed to crawl under the covers and get refreshed, just in time for Cyber Monday.

By Sohn Jie-ae

Sohn Jie-ae is a visiting scholar at the University of Southern California and a visiting professor at Ewha Womans University. She was president of Arirang TV and Radio. ― Ed.