Dr Mariusz Woźniakowski from the Faculty of Management at the University of Lodz comments.
Earlier discounts, longer shopping season
The majority of the retail chains take advantage of the media hype around Black Friday and the fact that, according to various studies, from 50 to even 90% of Poles have heard about special Black Friday offers. Therefore, retail chains go beyond Black Friday with their promotional activities and exploit the slogan itself to the limit, somehow depreciating it. They use slogans such as: black week, black weeks, Black Friday every weekend of the month, we are ahead of Black Friday, black week a week earlier (talking about earlier bargains), etc. The popularity of this type of promotional campaigns also results from the more and more common planning of pre-Christmas shopping, i.e. collecting gifts from the turn of October and November. Thanks to this, we can do the grocery shopping in December, which is difficult to do beforehand. In many cases, such an approach does not burden the budget too much during the holiday month, and both salespeople and customers benefit from it. Salespeople enjoy the holiday season basically from the beginning of November, while the customers can afford larger purchases. Currently, this approach to shopping may also be caused by high inflation and fear of further price increases, and thus anxiety about whether the household budget will cope with the planned Christmas shopping.
The first year with the Omnibus Directive
Black Friday 2023 is its first edition when the provisions of the Omnibus Directive apply. This directive requires much greater price transparency from sellers, which may affect the shape of this year's BF. The Omnibus Directive should limit the activities of sellers who have not been fully ethical 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 will not eliminate dishonest sellers who want to circumvent the regulations, but their number will certainly decrease. Omnibus will certainly contribute to creating the image of sellers with genuine, big bargains, and thus consumers will have the opportunity to find attractive offers without fake bargains.
Customer awareness is growing
In the context of unfair practices, it should be noted that consumers are becoming more and more aware every year. The smartshopping trend is intensifying. It refers to awareness of consumer rights, but also customer service standards (including available delivery options and costs, return policies, etc.) and pricing policy activities by sellers. There are more and more tools online that monitor prices. Consumers are becoming more and more familiar with them and are starting to use them willingly.
Additionally, the Omnibus Directive introduced an obligation for sellers to inform consumers about the verification of the authenticity of the ratings contained in product reviews added by buyers, which are posted on the website of a given store. The mere information on a possible lack of verification constitutes the fulfillment of the seller’s obligation, but in such a situation it is a clear signal to consumers that such opinions cannot be fully trusted. Therefore, it is in the sellers' interest to introduce a system that verifies product ratings placed on their store's website.
Despite the increased protective umbrella over consumers, they should still consider whether, thanks to Black Friday, we as customers really save money or expose ourselves to unnecessary expenses? A clear answer cannot be given. As always, the only advice we can give is to try not to buy on impulse. Slogans such as "minus 90%" are most often marked with an asterisk that they apply only to a selected and limited assortment. And the selected product is usually the one that has been in stock for several seasons. To avoid later disappointments, it is best to compare current prices from different sellers and look at the prices of products (especially the more expensive ones) in a specific time period.
Author of the commentary: Dr Mariusz Woźniakowski, Department of Marketing at the Faculty of Management, University of Lodz
Edit: Faculty of management, University of Lodz