What Products have the Highest Price Hikes before Black Friday?
Black Friday, as it is known today, began in the 1950s and has since become an increasingly popular day for individuals to take advantage of unique deals and promotions in store and online, with huge price drops across a range of products. In turn, this has benefited businesses with increased customer acquisition, brand awareness and the sales themselves. This has also increased the market on special promotion days, such as Cyber Monday and Prime Days.
However, in recent years, a question has been raised about the methods used to inflate these deals, making them seem better than they are, by hiking prices in the weeks before and dropping them just under their original price.
At KnownHost, a study was conducted that analyzed the changes in pricing across the months of October and November to investigate whether the Black Friday deals are genuine, focusing on the best tech deals.
Price Changes around Black Friday
Out of the products included in the study, 78% participated in the Black Friday sale. Out of these, 42% had a stable price before the sale, maintaining their price and then dropping considerably, meaning the Black Friday price drop was authentic. The average discount across these sales was a drop of $125.
In comparison, 29% of products hiked their prices in the week before Black Friday, the average percentage change of the hike being a 20.5% increase, before dropping on the sale. These price hikes increased prices by an average of $51.
Products with the Biggest Price Hikes
For the top products, which are ranked according to price change, the largest price hike in the week before Black Friday was Amazon Fire TV Stick, which increased price by $20 which is a 100% increase from 20. This change drops to 46% price change for Amazon’s Echo Buds, which increased by $55 before the sale.
The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 had the largest monetary increase by 300$ which was an increase of 16% of the original price, jumping from $1620 to $1919.99.
Product Groups That are Most Likely to Have Prices Hiked
Within the products that hiked, tech accessories were the most likely to hike their prices by 26%, whilst tablets and TVs were the least likely to hike by only 5.26%. From this, we can see that buying TVs during Black Friday is likely to be the best time to get the better discounts, whilst steering clear of any appealing add-ons.
Headphones were also likely to hike costs accounting for 21% of hiked products, followed by smart watches and laptops with 15.8% and phones with 10.5%, with these items being ones to watch for overemphasized sales.
Conclusion
Black Friday can be as good as it seems with genuine deals still available to save money and get presents just before Christmas but checking these deals out beforehand is important so that you really are saving money.
Price hikes are only one of a plethora of scams that can occur on a day such as Black Friday, with misleading customer reviews and even counterfeit items. Like when buying any product, it is important to check the validity of where you are buying from and not get caught by the marketing of certain products.
Methodology
To find out the percentage of Black Friday Hikes, a seed list of 65 products from listicles on the best technology deals for Black Friday 2023 were used across online retailers. These products prices were then monitored from October 2023 and across November 2023 using the estimated pricing on CamelCamelCamel. These prices were then compiled and calculated to discover the percentage change of the hikes or drops before Black Friday.