So Black Friday has been and gone. What interested me wasn’t the enthusiasm with which UK retailers adopted this previously Stateside event, the clunky marketing that accompanied it or the depressing and predictably aggressive actions of some bargain hunters.
What really surprised me was two things; firstly just how high awareness of the event now is among UK shoppers. Last year I wrote about how no-one seemed to really know what Black Friday was when Asda went all-out in a suprise promotional frenzy. This year research from eDigitalResearch released two weeks before Black Friday reckoned that 72% of UK shoppers were aware of the event. And that was before every retailer of any size rolled out their ‘Black Friday Weekend Event’ (yes, I know, semantics…).
photo by the lovely @EmmaTN
The second thing I didn’t really expect to see was my facebook feed peppered with posts criticising the greed and aggression that came hand-in-hand with Black Friday in some stores, with supermarkets in particular seen as somewhat complicit in encouraging mindless consumption and failing to control the crowds properly.
Retailers take note, next year everyone expects another Black Friday – but they expect you to manage it properly too.