This long-awaited shopping event of the year can be hyped up for literally no reason. While that sounds like, Duh Yo! You have to be careful, it really is the truth. There are many manipulative tactics on price and quantity and of course FOMO to get you to part with your cash. Here are the top two tactics I saw in my 16 years of retail.
Protect Yourself Against Psychological Price Warfare
Who likes having their heads messed with? No one? Exactly but that is just what retailers do on Black Friday, and all year round to be honest, but here is the breakdown. An item is marked at a specific price, let’s say a dress for $79.99. Various sale events are run January through November reducing the price, depending on the sale. Just before Thanksgiving, the item is marked at full price and as it just so happens that’s when you go to the store or hop online to see what they have that you’re interested in. You make note of this dress that is $79.99 to see what it goes down to for Black Friday.
The big sale comes and you see the dress is marked down! It’s on sale for $59.99 at 25% off! Huzzah what a deal! You excitedly buy this dress and feel accomplished except that the retailer just pulled one over on you. Those other sales throughout the year will drop the price as low as $39.99!
Because they know you are out to shop on this particular sales event they get away with smaller markdowns and get you to spend more than you would at other times of the year. Using the “what they don’t know can’t hurt them” principle the wool gets pulled over your eyes.
What you want to do is keep an eye out consistently at a few frequently-shopped stores for the usual sales events. Stores count on you being unfamiliar with the pricing and that’s how they get away with it. Look at what types of sale events they are running and what the prices of certain items or brands are marked down to. This will give you a more accurate picture of what’s actually a good deal or a hoax.
“What they don’t know can’t hurt them. Raise the price!”
Every Retailer on Black Friday
Save your friends and family from psychological price warfare and share this with them!
Keep Your Cash By Staying On Time
“Oh I’m sorry, we can’t accept that, it expired at noon.” As you stand there in shock that you missed the fine print on the time restrictions and have to pay more than you expected or worse, have to go through the goods at the register to decide what you want to keep and what you have to get rid of, you wonder how you could have missed that clause on the bottom. These time cut-off restrictions on their coupons are designed to get you into the store at a specific time and capitalize on those who don’t read the time restrictions.
You know that a sale will end at a particular time but a coupon? They expect you to gloss over the fine print, only read the date and show up late in the day. When this happens it is sometimes at the discretion of the store management team to approve the use of these coupons and sometimes they have zero ability to make a concession. When you think about it there are thousands of people that come through a store on this day specifically so it may be impossible to honor all of the late coupons that come in. The moral of the story here? Be careful of the fine print and read the date and time restrictions.
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