Is Black Friday even a thing anymore?

Published in El Pais, December 14th 2019.

Everyone knows of Black Friday by now. What was once an exclusive American “holiday” is now celebrated world wide with merchants all having their own sale. I myself indulged in a little shopping both for myself and for others. Some of the things I bought were a couple of video games on the PlayStation store. Contrary to the name of the sale it ran from a week prior to the following Monday for Cyber Monday. This of course is becoming normal as the day is becoming more Black Friday week with a small number of deals exclusive to the actual day so I was not so surprised the sale ran for so long. What did surprise me was the email I woke up to the following Tuesday. The PlayStation store was having an “End of Year” sale for the next two weeks. While the selection was not the same and some of the discounts were different, I found it quite comparable to the deals being offered just the day before. This led me to ask myself, “What was the point of Black Friday?’

They of course are not the only ones. Even now more than a week later stores like Best Buy are still offering many Black Friday prices. Others are not directly referring to that famous day but are still offering sales similar promotions.

There are also so many shopping days year-round that it is hard to keep up. Amazon Prime Day, Boxing Day, Alibaba Singles Day are to name a few and do not even count sales individual stores are having for whatever reasons like anniversaries.

This can understandably be confusing but if you want to be a smart shopper your best bet is to ignore the flashy sale days and just price shop as normal. There are good sales on Black Friday but there are good sales on any other day too. If there is something you are interested in buying and you see it on sale at a good price, then you should purchase it regardless of what day it is. Chances it will be a good deal.