How to hack Black Friday
Black Friday is the retail phenomenon imported from America. Taking place on November 24 it creates a shopping frenzy, with previous years seeing bargain hunters fighting over half price televisions and coffee machines.
Digital agency Fifteen offers some hints on how to avoid the scraps and still save.
Preparation is Key:
Hacking Black Friday requires serious forward planning. Pick your favourite websites ahead of time and subscribe to their mailing list. It’s an oldie but a goody. Subscribing to a mail-out may well cause you some unsightly inbox notifications for a couple of weeks, but it can be catered to your specific shopping habits and gives you the opportunity to have deals sent straight to you, avoiding a 12 hour ‘refresh this page’ sit in. Most big-name brands are planning plenty of pre-sale and early offers, as well as offering their loyal subscribers the ability to pre-order some of their best bargains.
Don’t wait, save all year round:
Sites like Groupon, Vouchercloud and Wowcher provide daily offers, unaffected by Black Friday madness. Subscribe to any one of these and you’ll find all manner of lifestyle, beauty and travel goodies sent straight to your smartphone. If it’s fashion you’re interested in and you don’t mind a bit of bargain hunting, why not give smart sale apps like Depop or Shpock a go. The second-hand marketplace has become a pillar of online consumerism in its own right. Although you can’t filter your needs or get more than one size, you may just bag a bargain without needing to prep for all-out retail warfare.
Market secrets:
Amongst the chaos, it’s easy to forget that we are often subject to a fair amount of hoodwinking from brands. Last year, the usually squeaky-clean John Lewis received a serious slap on the wrist from the Advertising Standards Agency for listing an Apple watch as part of their Black Friday promotion at almost half the retail price, yet the brand avoided any actual sales by listing the product as out of stock, only for it to return to stock the very next day, at its original (significantly higher) price.
Asda have still yet to announce whether they will participate in this year’s Black Friday, after images in 2014 surfaced of shoppers scrambling over discounted TV’s. The household brand name suffered publicly, prompting it to opt out of the bedlam for the following two years.
Sack Black Friday:
In 2017 we’re seeing increasing anti-consumerism trends emerging. Customers don’t often trust certain brands or discounts and with the popularity of the heavily varied online marketplace, it’s easier to shop around and get a better deal.
Not only that, but social trends have seen a huge increase in consumers choosing to give back rather than spend. Lush cosmetics have traditionally paved the way for charitable acts which capitalise on the popularity of Black Friday. Last year they created a product specifically for the occasion, of which, all profits were donated to charity. In a similar way to food outlet Pieminister, who opened 10 of their UK stores and gave away surplus stock in exchange for donations to housing charity Shelter.
Ollie Piddubriwnyj, managing director of Fifteen, said: “The vast nature of our retail world now means that with a little research and planning you can beat Black Friday at its own game.”
