Tesco, B&M, Amazon, Sainsbury’s, John Lewis and Dixons have all continued to offer Black Friday deals, however ASDA, which introduced the concept in the United Kingdom, announced it was not getting involved this year.
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Small crowds were well managed by security staff at Tesco Extra in Marton, which opened at 5am and introduced a staggered queuing system, while Asda in Cherry Tree Road didn’t even take part.
The research shows “Black and Blue Friday” is now competing with boozy “Mad Friday” as emergency services are pushed to the limit.
It has been running in the United Kingdom for around five years with more and more retailers taking part.
Mr Masterson does not expect it to hit the heights of a year ago, but is still hopeful the increased numbers through the doors will help kick off the shopping season.
Retailers made cut-price deals available online from midnight and many spent the night preparing to open their doors early to customers desperate to snap up discounted stock, ranging from televisions to toothbrushes. “Mobile visits almost doubled yesterday vs. past year!”
You can register your interest to get a heads up on the offers they’ve got coming, by heading to their Black Friday page early. By going through those channels you will be sent notifications as to the latest deals.
Meanwhile, the Babylis Curl Secret Hair Styler is half price at £59.50, and the Tassimo T20 Coffee Machine has been slashed from £99.50 to £29.50.
Last year, fraud spiked on Black Friday and remained high throughout the festive period as crooks targeted the digitally naive.
He noted the day is a bit of a double edged sword for retailers in the United Kingdom as it doesn’t correlate with Thanksgiving as it does in the US. Expect more of the same this year, especially as Tesco is now pushing as hard as it can to cut prices to keep up with the likes of Aldi and Lidl.
“I think we saved 70%”, she said.
In previous years, especially in the United States, customers get to their favourite shops extremely early and can be very rowdy.
There was a mixture of delight and frustration among bargain-hungry shoppers.
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Many shoppers chose to shop online from the comfort of their homes rather than venture out to shopping centres.
