Everything You Know About Black Friday Is Wrong : The New Yorker

Everything You Know About Black Friday Is Wrong : The New Yorker: Black Friday doesn’t even necessarily offer the best discounts, contrary to what retailers want their customers to believe. Rather than selling most merchandise at full price and marking down what doesn’t sell, stores now engineer their prices, so that the “discounted” prices are actually at the level they had wanted all along. Some “door-buster” items, in limited quantities, lure people into stores. Many gifts, though, have lower price tags at other times. The consumer-price research firm Decide Inc. analyzed data for the Wall Street Journal last year and found that Elmo dolls, Ugg boots, Samsung TVs, and KitchenAid stand mixers were less expensive on other days. (Decide closed its services in September, after being purchased by eBay.) Consumer Reports indicates that many home appliances and small consumer electronics are cheapest in December.