Black Friday has gained popularity over the years with people frantic to do some major bargain shopping for Christmas. Some are simply abandoning the shopfest.
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A Black Friday backlash appears to be gathering force at a time some traditionalists are bemoaning the way that Halloween, with its kitsch and goofy costumes and edible eyeball cakes, is slowly supplanting Guy Fawkes Day.
Google search data shows interest in “Black Friday sales” in New Zealand jumped a whopping 222 per cent between 2012 and 2014.
“We have plenty of our own traditions, such as Morris dancing, boarding schools, warm beer and aristocrats, many of which are even weirder than marshmallow-topped potatoes”, said Sarah Vine, a columnist for The Daily Mail. More refined. More, well, British.
But with searches for Boxing Day sales still three times greater among Kiwis than Black Friday sales, it doesn’t look set to overtake the post-Christmas shopping spree. Its decision to drum up publicity at one London store previous year backfired spectacularly when camera crews filmed hordes of shoppers barging through the doors and fighting over an inadequate number of cheap smartphones and video games.
Black Friday is nearly upon us again, as Friday November 27 sees the sales event hit stores across the UK.
With discounts of up to 80% on products, South African consumers can save a lot of money during Black Friday. “It’s so destructive because of its timing”, says Richard Hyman, an independent retail analyst. But the most commonly cited one has to do with ink, paper, and accounting.
So what can you do to ensure you have the best strategy for the craziness of black Friday?
Some stores open at midnight on Friday, and this year a few have had offers on all week.
By the early 1980s, an alternative theory began to be circulated: that retailers traditionally operated at a financial loss for most of the year (January through November) and made their profit during the holiday season, beginning on the day after Thanksgiving.
Retailers know that taking orders they can’t deliver hurts their reputations, especially when Amazon.com-which now offers a one-hour delivery service to some Prime customers in the U.K.-is raising expectations ever higher.
To separate myth from fact, the WalletHub research team compared the pre-Black Friday and actual Black Friday prices of a broad selection of items. After all, they don’t even celebrate Thanksgiving. Asda said it was dropping Black Friday this year because of “shopper fatigue”.
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The bottom line: Some of Britain’s brick-and-mortar retailers are dropping Black Friday.
