Let me preface this post by saying that I am a shopaholic. It’s no secret that I love fashion, and my idea of therapy is retail. I love to go shopping, and can't resist a good sale. That being said, there is one day of the year that I fear more than anything—Black Friday. Most people would think I would partake in the shameless shopping madness that begins at midnight, but in reality I stay as far away as I physically can. This year, as I tuned into the news to see how many shoppers were quite literally trampled to death in pursuit of a $10 toaster oven, I found myself wondering what kind of culture we have created.
If someone told me that I should drive to Target at midnight and wait in a crowded line for 3 hours with crazed housewives and eager shoppers, all for the privilege of spending my own money, I would tell them they’re crazy. But year after year, never fail, the day after Thanksgiving continues to be the country’s biggest shopping day of the year. The word “sale” has become gold to Black Friday shoppers. It entices them to set their alarms for 1 am, actually risk their lives as they fight their way through the mobs of shoppers, and spend more money than they have. If this isn’t the craziest consumer behavior our country has created, then I don’t know what is.
Looking past the danger of literally losing your life while shopping (because obviously a sale is worth endangering yourself), I find myself most confused by the reasoning that these customers seem to hold on to. With sales of up to 80%, and deals on every item in almost any store countrywide, consumers focus on how much money they save. However, they fail to recognize that these Black Friday sales really just entice customers to purchase things they do not need and were never planning on buying in the first place. Maybe the force of the almighty sale is just too powerful, or maybe consumers have yet to figure it out, but I am going to lay it out for you all right now—buying something, even if it is on sale, still costs money.
Just let that sink in for a minute.
I get it, and you get it, and maybe even the quintessential Black Friday shopper gets it, but once November 25 rolls around, all logic seems to go out the window.
So even if this behavior is crazy (and I believe it is) it is clearly not going to change. What does this mean for retailers and stores around the country? Consumers have come to expect ridiculously low prices on Black Friday. If it’s not at least 25% off, they’re probably not going to buy it, and if your store doesn’t have some kind of sale, you can forget about selling any merchandise on the country’s biggest shopping day. So as a store, it is your responsibility to give in to this madness if you want to see your products fly off the shelves. My only worry is that consumers are going to start to demand these low prices more than one day a year—and when that happens, the losing battle of a price war starts. But so far retailers have done a good job of limiting their sales to November 25—which allows those hardcore shoppers to search for the best deals at 2 am, and lets me shop without the fear of being trampled on the other 364 days of the year.
-Raquel Scharyj
I completely agree with all you are saying...being trampled by mobs of pushy shoppers is not my idea of a relaxing holiday! And yet they released that this past Black Friday was the biggest yet, with over $52.4 billion spent (insane). I can also identify with the difficulty of grappling with the concept that something on sale still costs you money and pulls you to buy things you might not need. Only last week I was at a clothing store for their major fall sale. At the register, I pulled a piece of paper out of a basket that was filled with misc. promotions or prizes. Mine read "30% off resort wear"...only problem was I had nothing from resort in my shopping bag. So clearly, I needed to find something from the resort line just to get that 30%...something I'm trying to work on. I'm interested to see the figures from today's newly established "Cyber Monday" and if it shifts Black Friday spending in the coming years.
ReplyDeleteAs I said in my earlier post about Black Friday, I'm not a fan of shopping that day, but I can relate to great sales causing people to buy things they don't need. Last weekend I was at a gift shop and bought a product which regularly costs $20. However, the sales associate told me there was a promotion going on where I could buy 2 more products that were originally priced at $20, and all 3 products would cost a total of $30. Although I didn't really need any of the other products, I couldn't resist spending an extra $10 to save $30 so I bought 2 more products to get the deal and was happy with my purchase. For myself and many other consumers I think the perceived value from the original price is very important. If the deal was on products that were originally priced much lower, I probably wouldn't have bought the extra items even if I had to spend less money to get the deal. I also think it's key that stores don't put products on sale too much because this can dilute the value in the consumer's mind and if the consumer thinks the sale price is what the product is really worth they probably won't buy again when it's back to full price.
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ReplyDeleteI have quite the love-hate relationship with Black Friday sales. For many of my experiences, I have left the store with a boat-load of gifts at ridiculously low sales prices. Of course however, you still have to literally fight your way through the hordes of people just to get to where your merchandise may be, and even then, you may be too late. The thing that really got me thinking was your insight that, even if something you’re buying is on sale, you’re still paying money for it. It’s always hard to remember these things, especially if you’re standing right in front of a man at Brooks Brothers and he’s offering you 3 shirts for $180, when you’ve already decided to only buy 2 for $130. As you can imagine, this happened to me the other week. Although it wasn’t Black Friday, BB was having some great sales. And so I made the trek to the closest BB halfway between here and Chapel Hill. Planning on only buying the two shirts, I was convinced I needed to buy the third by my faulty logic: I thought, well a third shirt is like basically free, when it’s discounted this much. FALSE. I was paying $50 more bucks. Yes it was a deal, but I failed to realize that I was in essence paying more money than I had originally budgeted for. They got me, I had been duped. It’s really unbelievable to me how consumers always tend to forget the fact that they’re probably paying more money altogether than they would have, even though they are indeed paying less per item.
ReplyDelete-Patrick Szawara