Wednesday, November 22, 2017

I'm About Black Friday'ed Out

I don't know about you, but I swear I started seeing black Friday ads in July.  For sure, for the last month, I must be getting 50 to 75 emails a day with black Friday in the subject.

When did this become a national thing?

Black Friday was supposed to be called that because it was the day where businesses turned their annual ledgers from red ink to black ink, but in the last few years it seems to have morphed into something else.  It has been reported for years that the big deals aren't necessarily really deals at all, or that some companies raise their prices in the weeks (months?) before the day so that what would have been a normal, small discount from MSRP suddenly seems like a deal.  It's being reported that more and more people are carrying their smartphone into the stores to price check things, check for price and availability at other stores, or get coupons.

Once there started to be a perception that good deals came on black Friday, it was only a matter of time until it became just another way of saying "BIG SALE!".  But shoppers like to think they're getting big deals, and there are stores that put one or two items on a massive discount to get some people to line up the night before.  Maybe they can get some buzz on the news.  Of course, now that stores are opening on Thanksgiving itself, Friday seems like it loses some drawing power.  Still, every year there's some incident where people get violent over something stupid.

It always pays to know what going prices are.  I've heard that generally speaking, the best time for deals is closer to Christmas, especially right before Christmas.  You'll get better prices than this week, but it's a gamble.  You're betting that the stores will be stuck with some of an item you want and would rather discount it than not sell it.  If they sell out first you lose.  If they don't sell out and don't/can't cut the price you lose.  That said, it has worked out for me in the past. 

Retail is a rough way to make a living. I'm sure you've heard how airline reservation systems base the seat price on the apparent interest in a flight.  If you go back and check on the price of that seat every week, the system says there must be more demand for that flight and raises the price.  What if stores could measure real time demand and adjust the price.  Say you're looking for a new tool or other gadget, what if they see you checking the web site regularly and interpret that as more people interested in that and raised the price.  Would you be upset or offended?  What if they dropped the price to see at what level you can't resist pushing the Glistening Candy-like "BUY IT" button?  I don't have any hard evidence that anyone does that, but it seems trivial for an online store to track interest in something.  The biggest risk is scaring away customers.

To me the Golden Rule is the willing seller/willing buyer.  My inner engineer drives me to optimize things, but if people are happy with what they paid, regardless of whether or not it really is "the best price of the year", and the seller is happy with they got for it, that's definition of a fair price.  I'm sure not gonna poop in anyone's Post Toasties.

As for me, I've never gotten up early to go do a black Friday shopping expedition, and it's doubtful I ever will.


I'll be taking off tomorrow.  Everyone have a wonderful and blessed Thanksgiving.  Not "Turkey Day", but a day for giving thanks. 


9 comments:

  1. Happy Thanksgiving.

    I avoid malls and Black Friday even though it's said that Black Fridays Matter.

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  2. Happy Thanksgiving, SiG!

    We got a very good price ($329.95) on a Samsung 45" 4k TV at Best Buy. The guy told us that many items in the store were already "Black Friday" priced, which is why the TV was $75 less than we expected.

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    1. Had to replace mine over the summer. Mr. Lightning was close enough to induce a charge in HDMI cables but nothing else in the house even blinked. Ours was a 48" Hitachi for $310, IIRC.

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  3. Amazon has been accused of pricing depending on interest, and inflating prices to make deals seem better, and charging Prime customers more, and a variety of things that individual pricing and big data make possible...

    One 'shopping expert' that I somehow saw on TV this week suggested putting stuff in your online cart, then abandoning the cart. Go back and she says you'll likely get an offer to entice you to complete the transaction.

    The loss leader I'm gonna go for is a $250 Bushmaster optic ready flat top AR from one of the medium sized online gunsellers. That's worth trying to be first with a cart thru the virtual door at 12:01 when even Del Ton rifles are $375 on sale. There are some good deals out there, and I don't have to leave the house to try for this one...

    nick

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    1. Didja get the Bush hamster?

      I've noticed certain Mid companies have a Way to identify what you've looked at and send you an email pointing out that it's still available. I've never followed through to see if they'll sweeten the deal any, but the emails have never said anything like, "You looked at the Labradar Chronograph for 27 minutes. Would it be more interesting if we dropped the price another $25?"

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    2. well, in theory, I should be looking at my cart and checkout right now, as it's just after midnight eastern on friday am.

      But, something is wrong with their website. It's showing a countdown clock with almost 2 days on it until the catalog goes live.

      So I'm not sure what's going on, but I don't have a new rifle, that's for sure.

      https://www.freedommunitions.com/firearms/rifles/bushmaster/bushmaster-qrc-optic-ready-carbine-5-56-nato.html

      I did have a great Thanksgiving day with lots of good food, friends, family, and conversation. That puts the day well into the plus column no matter what happens with the rifle. :-)

      nick

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    3. 8 hours later it says "sold out" so things changed, and I imagine they changed pretty quickly at some time.

      Our BassPro had an ad that said between 5 and 11 AM, they had some Savage Rascal kid's rifles for $80. I thought about trying to be at the store at 5, for about a nanosecond.

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    4. Yup, malice or incompetence, if they were hoping to get some new customers with the loss leader, they ended up doing the opposite. No interest in doing business with someone who would bait and switch, or be that bad at ecommerce (which is their business model fer peter's sake.) I'd be a lot more understanding if the site crashed under load. Simple failure to launch is unforgivable (and there was no groveling email this morning either.)

      Oh well, a good day was had IRL which is the much more important thing.

      nick

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  4. I never did the black friday thing until I had chickens and the local farm store put feed on sale for $9 when it's normally $13, and they give a $25 gift card with a $100 purchase for the first 250 people through the door. I was in that 250 twice this year.

    -Joat

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