Black Friday offers fail to satisfy

Consumer suspicions that this year’s Black Friday offers didn’t offer much in the way of bargains have been confirmed by data compiled by online commerce platform Skroutz, as just 8.32% of the products sold during the sales period last month had a discount of more than 10%.

The comparative data used by the platform’s Business Intelligence unit showed that the vast majority (87.9%) of products sold over this Black Friday period were sold for the same price as before the commercial event or up to 10% cheaper. There was even 3.78% of products whose prices were hiked before Black Friday, the researchers found.

This is not a new phenomenon, as a similar share of products sold last year (8.5%) had a discount of more than 10%; however, this year, far more products saw price hikes than last year’s 1.2%. The main category that reported increased prices this Black Friday was children’s and baby clothing.

This year’s data are also more astonishing given that purchases were almost entirely made online, with most brick-and-mortar stores closed.