You Snooze You Lose: Is Black Friday Worth It?

I want to discuss the concept of Black Friday. Admittedly, it may seem like a trivial subject to tackle. But its’ effects aren’t and often leave me feeling guilty or like a loser because I didn’t capitalise on sales. In essence, the corporations promote impulse buying thru scarcity and Black Friday is the biggest indicator of that.

Admittedly, if the most recent Black Friday is any indicator, I suck at it. Specifically, I’ve needed a microwave for a while now but held off because I didn’t wanna pay more than $50 for one. Well, I saw one on Kohl’s website on Thursday that fit my criteria: under $50, small and had good reviews. Yet, I still couldn’t bring my self to buy it: especially given I can just heat stuff in the oven or on the the stove. Not to mention if I move that’d just be something else to carry. So, I decided to give it a day before committing. But, it got sold out during that time and, as expected, the self-deprecation, regret all of the above ensued. However, logically speaking, my decision to wait wasn’t wrong. And this leads to my next point.

Which is that Black Friday, cyber Monday and the holidays can foster impulse buying. Of course, this could be avoided by planning ahead. And, to be clear, I’ve done that in the past: specifically, I snagged a good Black Friday deal on an xbox 360 bundle in 2013. Though, in the weeks leading up to that I spent a lot of free time obsessively researching and comparing ads and such. But given time is more valuable than money, did I really get a deal?

Lastly, black Friday alludes to a bigger theme that of capitalism: scarcity. Or rather there always seems to be a scarcity of cheap, quality goods and a surplus of premium, high-end goods. Take the microwave, for example. Clearly, there’s a demand for a microwave at that price point. Yet it sold out while more expensive microwaves at Kohl’s were fully available. Economically speaking, you’d think it’d work the other way around: limit production of high end goods and mass produce cheaper, but reliable goods. But it doesn’t seem to be working like that lately.

By and large, Black Friday alludes to the manufactured scarcity that permeates the retail industry. I mean I respect the bottom line. But limiting the supply of affordable goods in favour of premium ones is unethical. But I guess that's to be expected from an increasingly obsolete economic model. With that said, thanks for reading and stay pissed.