Black Friday is back

Recently I was reading -speaking about Halloween- that there is nothing more typical of our country than to sign up for all the festivities. This is probably what brands thought when they saw the opportunity to bring Christmas shopping forward for several weeks, by embracing a holiday whose meaning I doubt is fully understood by most of the people.

I remember Thanksgiving Day during my American days: the perfect opportunity (or excuse) to make up for the guilt of thousands of people who had not visited their relatives for a while, surrounded by lots of food and football. The mass exodus, the emptiness of the cities. For one day. As Thursday led to Friday, families took over the city shopping, allowing brands to finally go from red to black numbers.

I remember when the concept of Black Friday entered in our country, not so long ago. Another opportunity to import any initiative that would encourage consumption in the “valley” moments. The entrance was “majestic”: all the brands threw themselves into a dizzying escalation of promotions and discounts, thinking that getting ahead of the Christmas shopping season could perhaps mean adding a few euros to their balances.

They completely forgot that customers become sensitive to such promotions, that they adapt their behaviour towards “smart shopping” and that they shift their actions to reducing their purchases just to discount times.

After the initial years of tug-of-war, no one is surprised to see that brands have learned and adjusted their strategies. They have switched to promotions that are more limited both in time and in offer, mainly focused on those items that need a little boost, in order to start (but not to end) a period where shopping has also become a national sport in our country.