Additionally, in e-commerce, free delivery and returns are important, which are becoming increasingly difficult to offer due to rising logistics handling costs. Dr Mariusz Woźniakowski from the Faculty of Management at the University of Lodz comments on Black Friday.
Most shops are benefiting from the media hype around Black Friday. The retail chains go beyond Black Friday with their promotional activities and exploit the slogan itself almost to the limit, depreciating it, so to speak. They use slogans like: black week, black weeks, Black Friday every weekend of the month, we're ahead of Black Friday, black week the week before (talking about earlier occasions), etc. The term Black Month and others referring to the colour black, such as black days for competitors, are also being used more frequently this year. Interestingly, in selected chains, the prelude to Black Friday was Halloween and combining the two occasions with slogans such as: scary low prices for black week. The popularity of Black Friday promotions is largely due to the increasing pre-Christmas shopping planning – mainly stockpiling gifts from late October/early November. This leaves grocery shopping, which is difficult to do beforehand, for December. This approach in many cases does not overburden the budget during the strictly festive month, and both traders and customers themselves benefit. The former basically benefit from the festive season from the beginning of November, the latter can afford to do more shopping. At present, this shopping approach may also be due to the not-so-optimistic consumer mood due to the general unrest in the economy resulting from, among other things, inflation and fears of further price increases, and thus anxiety about whether the household budget will be able to sustain the planned Christmas shopping.
It should be noted that Black Friday 2024 is the second in which Omnibus directive regulations apply. It has contributed to far greater price transparency. The Omnibus Directive has limited the ambitions of traders who have not been operating entirely ethically so far. Mainly those who artificially raised prices before Black Friday, only to artificially lower them later, giving customers a false sense of savings. This has not eliminated dishonest traders seeking to circumvent the regulations, but their numbers are certainly limited. The Omnibus has helped to create the image of traders with authentic major promotions, and thus consumers have gained the ability to find attractive offers without fake promotions.
In the context of unfair practices, it is important to note that consumers are becoming more and more aware every year. There is a growing trend of smartshopping, which refers to awareness of one's consumer rights, but also customer service standards (e.g. available delivery options and costs, return policies, etc.) and retailers' pricing actions. There are more and more tools on the web that monitor prices and consumers are becoming increasingly familiar with them and starting to use them willingly.
Despite the increased protective umbrella over consumers, they should still consider whether, thanks to Black Friday, we as customers are really saving money or exposing ourselves to unnecessary expenses. No clear answer can be given. As usual, one can only advise to try not to buy on impulse. Slogans such as 'minus 90%' are usually accompanied by an asterisk stating that they apply only to a selected and limited range. And this chosen one is usually a single product that has been in stock for several seasons. To avoid later disappointment, it is best to:
- compare current prices from different traders;
- look at the prices of products (especially the more expensive ones) over a certain period of time;
- create a shopping list, limiting it to really necessary products, thus avoiding impulsive purchases;
- check the conditions and possibility of return;
- set a budget to help avoid overspending.
In 2024, we can look at some trends in consumer attitudes that translate directly into trade, and for merchants taking advantage of the popularity of the Black Friday slogan, they may be troublesome. Such trends include increasingly responsible consumer attitudes expressed in sustainable consumption or conscious consumerism. On the other hand, traders also have to deal with unethical consumer attitudes, expressed, for example, in the phenomenon of wardrobing, which even includes an aspect of fraud (the customer buys products, mainly clothing and footwear, with the intention of using them and returning them to the shop).
Author of the commentary: Dr Mariusz Woźniakowski
Edit: Faculty of Management, University of Lodz