Features  

Black Friday: A Rip-off Or The Love For Business Loss?

By Bright Azuh

01 December 2019   |   7:16 am

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on WhatsApp Share on Telegram

How enthusiastic people get when prices of products they dream of owning but can’t afford to have due to high cost, are slashed to their barest minimum, making them very affordable to purchase. Black Fridays are recognized both locally and internationally as the days invented by store owners (both cyber and physical), to lure buyers…

Black Friday tag | Photo: Wilx

How enthusiastic people get when prices of products they dream of owning but can’t afford to have due to high cost, are slashed to their barest minimum, making them very affordable to purchase.

Black Fridays are recognized both locally and internationally as the days invented by store owners (both cyber and physical), to lure buyers to purchase products and services with unimaginable discount rates, usually done towards the end of the year.

Here, prices of things are slashed to their barest minimum, making them ‘a must get’ for every consumer.

During black Fridays, business owners are so dedicated to delivering to customers the ultimate discounted product of any kind, even to their doorsteps with no delivery charges. It is recorded that shoppers do half of their Christmas holiday shopping on black Fridays.

In an interactive session with an online store’s sales agent, Boma Wariboko, who has been on the platform for over three years, highlighted the issues behind Jumia Black Friday in Nigeria.  She said, “Black Friday is a time for customers to have every product they have always wanted all through the year at an affordable rate, delivered to them wherever they want.”

“People can get two or three products for the price of one and have them delivered to them at any location of their choice, adding that millions of people visit the website, as well as download the mobile application in order to monitor and hunt products that are placed on discount.”

According to Wariboko, certain products, let’s say a computer will be at 30, 40 or even 50 percent off the normal price, making it almost impossible for consumers to neglect.

She said it is called “flash sale,” considering that the sale will never have less than 10 pieces of the product being sold and that not everyone, however, gets a chance to grab the product due to the number of people visiting the platform at that same time.

“We have over four million products ranging from wears, household utensils, electronic appliances, mobile phones, computers, and others. These products are limited, thus people might not have access to them anytime they want.

Ibeh Kelechi, a regular shopper on Nigerian cyber stores said he thinks these online stores make much more profits during black Friday sales.

‘’Black Friday is a great opportunity for cyber stores to draw people’s attention and use that chance to make lots of money. “Imagine how many Nigerians who download the application, dedicate their time online, searching for the ‘treasure item’ on the website. With the traffic generated, how much money will the store possibly generate in one month? he asked.

The ‘treasure item’ is basically a product hidden in the store, usually slashed down to at most 20 percent and most times found in other categories of items.

Kelechi, however, does not think black Friday is a rip-off but great opportunities for businesses to create more traffic and gain more regardless of how much they slash their products.

On the other hand, a certain Elizabeth Swims on social media expressed her displeasure on the idea of black Friday. She said retail stores intentionally jack up the prices of things and then reducing them back down to the regular prices and lying to consumers that they are on sales.

She also thinks the rush Induces anxiety in people, having them think everyone except them is shopping and then intriguing them to spend more than they have budgeted.

However, in another light and considering that buyers always eager to buy on discounted rate when products are available, at any time of the day, with the workload, does black Friday suggest that these stores subject that staff (retail sales agents and delivery men) to outrageous work shift, where they literarily work almost all hours of the day?

Could it also be that black Fridays are easy means by which these businesses sell off their old stocks that were not sold all through the year just to dispatch the risk of losing?

These questions arose from an in-depth observation of how retail stores function, bearing in mind that no business loves to run in the loss, hence they do everything possible to sell out their old products during the holidays so as to begin the new year with new products.

Whichever way you see it, Black Friday has become a tradition that will stick even in time to come.