Why Black Friday is not for me
My response to the discount hysteria is one of indifference and irritation
Welcome to Bleak – sorry, Black – Friday, the day when much of the nation, indeed half the world, descends into a greedily acquisitive shopping frenzy.
As you may have guessed, I’m not a fan. Never was. Never will be. Not that retailers haven’t been trying to lure me in with giddy, pinch-me-i’mdreaming offers.
So far I’ve resisted the temptations of reduced Paperchase jotters, phone brands I can’t pronounce, half-price bras from Debenhams, and a bizarre, three-for-one bargain on “muscle meat” hampers, which look every bit as revolting as they sound.
My emotional response to the manufactured discount hysteria is one of indifference, shot through with irritation. At the risk of sounding like an eccentric billionaire (and entirely contrary to my husband’s viewpoint), we already have quite a sizeable television and, hand on heart, if we’re not prepared to pay full price for an upgrade then we probably don’t really need it.
But today of all days, the lines between need and want are blurred beyond distinction. By way of context: last year, Currys PC World saw their highest volume of sales of televisions on Black Friday, while Argos saw 13,496 shoppers visit its website every minute.
In total, we spent a staggering £1.4billion on online sales during Black Friday in 2017, up 11.7 per cent on last year, according to online retailers’ trade body IMRG.
Will the upward trajectory continue this year? I’m slightly afraid to say, in case I’m accused of talking down the economy, but for all our sakes I hope we have already had peak Black Friday, and that common sense – and a damning new report from consumer champions Which? – will prevail.
Having tracked product prices for 12 months, Which? found that 87 per cent were the same price or cheaper than their Black Friday price at other times of year.
Some 46 per cent of products were also cheaper than their Black Friday price on at least one day during the six months afterwards. It’s enough to make even the most spendthrift put away their credit cards.
Fat chance. In truth, Black Friday is about human psychology rooted in Fomo (fear of missing out) and innate competitiveness.
So what if it’s a Nintendo Switch rather than fresh water or a new fruit crop? The impulse is to gorge ourselves before anyone else does.
The fact that customers can subsequently return or exchange their goods means they have nothing to lose. Perhaps not materially. Spiritually is another thing.
I don’t mean this in a Bible-thumpy way, à la Matthew 16:26 (“For what doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul?”).
Actually, maybe I do. Wow.
But let’s put the ecclesiastical element aside and talk about the non-denominational morality of accumulating stuff.
The world’s sealife is drowning in plastic. It’s so embedded in the food chain that we are ingesting it, too.
Fossil fuels are polluting the air (and the water and the land), from factories churning out what were once known as consumer durables but now come with inbuilt obsolescence, making them no longer worthy of the title.
I could go on. But it’s too depressing, and there’s a real and present danger you, Dear Reader, might find yourself gravitating towards retail therapy for a restorative dopamine hit.
And you won’t even have to put on shoes. That aspect of our orgiastic consumption irks me, too; at least there was a certain authenticity about the pushing, shoving, stabyour-granny-for-the-sake-of-a-newmagimix-ruthlessness.
Even through my sneers, I could sort of respect the hunting-gathering primacy about the hordes stampeding through glass doors and hurling themselves up escalators to the electrical department.
But the vast majority of shoppers will be slumped in front of computers or hunched over smartphones.
The origins of the name Black Friday are disputed. It’s said that in the Fifties, Philadelphia police used the term to describe the chaos on the day after Thanksgiving, when hundreds of suburban tourists would pack into the city to shop and watch the big Army-navy football game held that day, causing mayhem for the police force. Then in the Eighties, it came to represent the day retailers finally went into the black after lean sales the rest of the year.
Whatever its provenance, Black Friday has taken a hold in the handful of years since its introduction here. Online retail giant Amazon is often credited with bringing Black Friday discounts to the UK eight years ago.
There are no end of theories as to why social people love shopping en masse and goal-orientated types don’t, but there is common agreement that the pleasure centres light up in our brains when we reach the actual or virtual checkout.
Drill down into the statistics and they reveal that, for a huge percentage of us, Black Friday is all about selflove; almost two-thirds of men and over three-quarters of under-25s plan to buy something for themselves.
Then 40 per cent of goods are sent back, costing retailers £180million in returns. It’s an awful lot of faff, especially as the endorphin kick we get from generous giving is far greater than the one we derive from snapping up bargains.
My advice is to hold back until Sunday December 2 and then call up
The Daily Telegraph Christmas Appeal. Black Friday can never compete with Selfless Sunday.