Black Friday: Big Discounts or Big Lie

Every year on the first Friday after American Thanksgiving Day there is a famous “Black Friday” – the day of discounts and sales. This year it fell on November, 29.

Scheduling did not stay aside from such a large-scale event and decided to find out what was behind that day and how many dark sides had the attractive signs “Black Friday”.

We have conducted marketing research in three European countries:  France, Sweden, and England to see if the stores were cheating on their customers to get as much profit as possible on Black Friday. The research was based on the three most popular product segments: electronics, clothing, and cosmetics. The most coveted segment on the day of discounts was clothing. But more discounts were given by electronics stores – 40%.

As our survey has shown, less than half of the respondents believe that announced discounts are real. They note that prices for certain types of goods are not lower than on other days. However, 60% are waiting for Black Friday to buy the desired product.  But not all stores are happy with their customers on Black Friday. Among the shops, where mystery visits were made, one third did not provide discounts on certain goods at all. 

In some countries, the global discount marathon began on Thursday and will have been lasting until the end of the calendar week, and even until the end of the month. Many shops while searching for customer attention and benefits started the so-called presale on Monday.

Such shops as The perfume shop and Rymans stationers announce and provide their discounts before the start of Black Friday, and it is difficult to catch them in deception because the price tag with a big discount is been ticketed on a product for a week.

Some stores, such as Moss bro’s, are even more cunning. They start their sales on Black Friday early in the morning, and you won’t see the discount until you pay for the goods, when the cash register automatically adds the discount.

Many shops announce discounts of 70%. But, as our research has shown, there are a few goods with such an offer in the stores. The biggest real discount of 25% on a certain position was made by clothing store Beaugrenelle.

Thus, our research shows that this popular shopping event is hype, and there are only a few big discounts.

But the same question remains ‘how real these discounts are?’ Were the prices inflated on the eve of big discounts? How you can protect yourself from reckless shopping in the future – read in our next article, where we tell you who and how to cash in on you!