An eternal Black Friday of the soul
I’ve really enjoyed how thirsty stores are this Black Friday season. It’s a whole season now! I always track the first time when I see the first mention of Black Friday on any store, and this year it was September 20. It wasn’t even fall yet, and someone came out and provided early access to Black Friday, in defiance of god.
Does anyone believe this? Black Friday primes the consumer. Everybody comes in, buys at once. This is notionally good for consumers (one day, thank god) and it sucks for everyone else (imagine your warehouse, delivery networks, etc over the following week). Stretching Black Friday is notionally good for customers if and only if they believe they’re maximizing their deals.
One of my clients put up early access to Black Friday a couple of weeks ago, and they wondered why sales slowed. There are two theories:
- People don’t believe it’s the actual sale yet. They think they’re likely to get bigger discounts on Black Friday itself. Priming them for Black Friday is giving the opposite effect of what’s intended.
- America is fascist and everybody is afraid to buy stuff.
And I kind of don’t care which? Either way, stores are trying to do damage control. I saw a masthead on one store that read:
BLACK FRIDAY DEALS HUGE SAVINGS AVAILABLE NOW PRICE PROTECTION ACTIVATED DON’T WAIT →
That “price protection activated” is doing some work, y’all. What does that even mean? Why would I want to go through all of the extra work to pricematch your own website against itself after I’ve made a purchase? Why would I want to root through your store’s terms & conditions to see if there are any gotchas?
The day I wrote this, Amazon began promoting “Black Friday Week,” which: Friday is not a week long.
Of course, Black Friday raises the question: why is everything so expensive the whole rest of the time? If you’re able to take 40% off your whole store on one day, then why are you charging 40% more the other 364 (or 350, or 300, or 270) days of the year? Do you think people won’t notice this?
Black Friday is so named because stores notionally exist in the “red” for the other 10 months of the year, and they get into the “black” by the sheer volume of sales on that date. What does that say about the sustainable state of commerce writ large?
At some point, the whole year will become one Black Friday sale, and all phrases to reflect commercial engagement of any kind will be replaced with mentions of Black Friday. “I need to go to the store and Black Friday a new lamp,” you’re say. And fine. Enjoy your thinner margins, y’all.