It’s never easy to find extra money for gifts but this year feels decidedly harder for so many of us - which is why reading about fake deals on Black Friday really stung, especially because these fake sales were not sporadic but rather quite widespread.
According to Consumer NZ data, 77 per cent of products it tracked for Black Friday could have been purchased for the same price or less in the weeks prior. This means Kiwis got some bad deals this Black Friday (and I don’t just mean the two-for-one coalition deal).
And look, I know what you’re thinking: don’t buy it if you can’t afford it. Sure, I’m with you on that, if we’re talking about a Lamborghini, not about the fridge someone needs to replace because their old one crapped itself, the backpack their child needs for school or the new sneakers for the little feet that will not stop growing.
Sure, it’d be nice to use Black Friday only for little treats for ourselves, but, given the current reality, many of us are less about seeing sales as opportunities for the odd extravagance and more about seeing them as a chance to get something we have no option but to spend money on.
It’s particularly hard considering most products have increased in price in the last few months, due to inflation and the cost-of-living crisis, which means their Black Friday price is, in many cases, what they would have cost last year without any promotion.
PriceSpy reports that about 80 per cent of the shopping categories researched in their latest report were found to be more expensive in 2023, compared to 2022. A price comparison across 12 months sure makes that “special” deal feel a lot less special.
I also believe that telling people they should just not buy things they can do without ignores two main points: Many people have already stripped down to the absolute essentials anyway; and that is a cop out for companies putting millions into marketing campaigns to convince you to buy their stuff.
Surely the onus is on them to not trick the consumer, and not on the consumer to not get tricked by them. If those campaigns were not effective, there would not be mega bucks behind it.
When I say mega bucks, I’m not exaggerating (I’d never in a million years do that). According to Consumer NZ, Black Friday spending across Aotearoa reached $67 million last year. A report from PriceSpy states that the amount of total sales generated between Black Friday through to Cyber Monday was worth $248.2m in 2022.
It’s with that in mind that I wish retailers were more transparent about their deals. A Black Friday deal needs to be exactly that: A deal that you get on Black Friday, that is better than what you get on any other day.
A “special” price needs to do the adjective justice. Five per cent off is not “special”, it’s tokenism, just to say you’re in on it. Two-for-one is not a good deal if it’s something no-one needs to buy two of. It should be on me to learn to decode marketing lingo - it should be on the business not to try to trick me with it.
New Zealand consumers may be a lot poorer this year but there’s one thing they’re not: dumb. I would personally rather give my dollars to someone not claiming to have sale on than to someone pretending to sell me a special deal, when that is their price for the product for about half of the year anyway. That’s called ripping people off, and it’s a rubbish thing to do at any time, but particularly when the times are so hard.
When it comes to phony sales, be it Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Boxing Day or any other day, I like to remember a maxim from the Minimalists - “it’s 100 per cent off if you don’t buy it” - and take my business elsewhere.
