Amazon has been offering insanely low prices on top HDTV models all week long as part of its ongoing Black Friday sale. A little too enthusiastically, it seems. “Black Friday in its current guise has gone”, says Asda Chief Executive Officer Andy Clarke.
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Some keen consumers braved damp and cold weather to form queues outside a number of stores across the United Kingdom from early in the morning but a number of high streets and shopping centres were deserted. It’s a serious business, with eager shoppers even camping outside one store in Chicago. Superdrug is heavily discounting skincare, electric toothbrushes and perfume. Police reinforcements had to be called in at stores all across the country for Black Friday, a name apparently coined by the Philadelphia Police Department in the early 1960s to describe the shopping and traffic turmoil that followed the holiday.
What are retailers doing this year?
This year, we’re seeing retailers such as Argos, Amazon and Curry’s scrap time-bound deals and extend sales in an effort to alleviate on-the-day traffic spikes.
Despite the publicity, some analysts are wary of the impact of the discounts on retailers’ pricing power, pointing out that some of chains which shunned the event previous year, such as clothing retailers Next (NXT.L) and Jigsaw, were among the best Christmas performers.
Asda is not participating in Black Friday this year – it’s not hard to imagine why. But the day will be a bit more subdued.
Black Friday may be the most significant sales day of the year, but there’s a darker side of which most people may not be aware. Amid the chaos, one woman was injured by a falling television and three men were charged – two with assault and one with a public order offence. Instead, Asda says it will spread out its sales across the season, rather than offering a one-off bonanza.
This year, some retailers – including Amazon, Argos, Marks & Spencer and Dixons Carphone – have stretched “Black Friday” discounts over several days.
BLEARY-eyed Black Friday bargain hunters were given team talks before entering a store – the dos and don’ts being “no abuse or violence” and “enjoy yourselves”.
Taking place on the last payday before Christmas, many see Black Friday as ideal time to stock up on presents at a reduced price. EBay predicts 9 million Britons will visit its website Friday, buying 25 items every second.
Another explanation is that Black Friday was the day retailers began to make a profit, tipping balance sheets from the red into the black. “It’s one of these things that everyone picked up on”.
An uplift in online sales on the Monday following Thanksgiving has more recently seen it dubbed as Cyber Monday, with the entire extended four-day weekend becoming a key event in the retail calendar.
Valerie Faulkner, 41, who was walking through the store, said she initially had no idea that Black Friday was a US tradition until she searched for it on Google.
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“The police will intervene if necessary to protect public order and safety, but we should be the service of last resort, not a substitute for carefully-considered in-store security plans”, she said. They’re also trying to encourage customers to start shopping via the Amazon Mobile app. To this end, they’re offering time-limited deals which are exclusive to the Amazon app. You can’t get these deals via a browser; you can only get them in the Amazon mobile app for Android or Apple phones and tablets.
