Black Friday is used to dump loss leaders, over runs and special order low function items that look like more expensive products. I have yet to ever buy anything offered on these sales.<p>Edit: There's plenty of info available regarding my statement. Here's a few links.<p>1. <a href="https://marketrealist.com/consumer/are-black-friday-tvs-lower-quality" rel="nofollow">https://marketrealist.com/consumer/are-black-friday-tvs-lowe...</a><p>2. <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/benzingainsights/2012/11/21/why-you-shouldnt-buy-a-tv-on-black-friday" rel="nofollow">https://www.forbes.com/sites/benzingainsights/2012/11/21/why...</a><p>3. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/black-friday-insider-secrets-2017-11" rel="nofollow">https://www.businessinsider.com/black-friday-insider-secrets...</a>
> If they can offer great prices all year round, why not do it? And if they can’t, then who’s paying for the great deal I’m getting today?<p>Working at a huge online retailer, I can tell you that the prevalent customer expectation is precisely „greatly reduced prices on black friday“. Even if we offered these reduced prices year round, the expectation would be to offer it even cheaper on Black Friday.
> If you need a new phone, buy a new phone. If you need a new laptop, buy a new laptop. If you need a new keyboard, buy a new keyboard.<p>> Not because it’s on sale. Because you need it.<p>What about things you don't need?<p>For instance, I didn't <i>need</i> an outdoor security system with motion triggered recording. But I was curious about what critters visit at night. A few days a year we get snow that stays around for two or three days and I see all kinds of tracks in it that I can't match to the usual suspects.<p>So I <i>wanted</i> such a system someday, but one that wasn't too expensive but good enough that I would not be frustrated with low quality recording or poorly designed hardware or software.<p>It went on my "get this when I come across a good deal" list. I saw a good deal on the next Prime Day and got something.<p>Another example. I've got a classical guitar and an electric guitar. For a while I've wanted a steel-string acoustic guitar but I don't <i>need</i> one. There are some songs and styles I'd like to learn that would be better on one, but I've still got so much left to learn of classical guitar its not like I'll run out of stuff to do if I don't get an acoustic immediately.<p>I made a list of a handful of acoustic guitars to keep an eye on. On Black Friday I checked the site of the manufacturer of one of them. They were having a Black Friday sale that actually made their next tier of guitars up from what I'd been looking at less expensive than the one I'd had my eye on normally goes for.
I done an Ask HN[0] yesterday about this entitled `Have we reached peak Black Friday?`. Some of the comments are insightful. This is my question:<p>> In the start it was novel. New smart TV marked down considerably that sold out in minutes. What a great idea! But then it caught on and became just another grift. Amazon is full of 'tat' that although it's marked down substantially, it's never something I actually need. It's more a good deal for the seller, not the buyer, and has also devolved into scam territory too. If you do enough price watching, you suddenly see new items on the market marked down, but nobody knows the original price, since it's a new item just launched for Black Friday! The whole thing just seems like a grift.<p>[0] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33745233" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33745233</a>
The author might be interested to know about Buy Nothing Day <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buy_Nothing_Day" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buy_Nothing_Day</a>
Why not treat it as another kind of sale? Namely, you know you are going to need X soon, you are not in a hurry to buy it, so you can wait until a sale/black Friday/January sale comes in.
Black Friday for me is about the tradeoff between money and patience.<p>Customers who do not have patience but have money can pay the normal marked up prices.<p>Customers who have patience but do not have money can wait for Black Friday.<p>Sure, you can have mid pricing all year round but that prices out a portion of your customer base.
I do feel like there were many more "fake discounts" this year where many brands simply rehashed the same discounts they were continuously offering before. I don't mind real discounts, but find it extremely distasteful when fake discounts are offered.
Two other negative externalities byproducts of Black Friday<p>* "you are the product" cranked up to 11, so reductive and fundamentally misanthropic<p>* Creates a lot of confusion and axiety in an already mentally fragile world