Half of Shoppers Say Black Friday Deals Are Getting Worse — But Is That True?

According to our recent survey, a little under half of Krazy Coupon Lady users say Black Friday deals have gotten worse over the past decade. They're not alone. This skepticism around Black Friday deals has popped up on Reddit, too, and in the media. As avid Black Friday shoppers ourselves (who very much shop all the Black Friday sales), we wanted to know: Are Black Friday deals really getting worse? And if they're not, why are the vibes so ... off?

We reached out to a consumer behavior expert, dug into our own deals vault, and looked up products’ price history to figure out whether Black Friday savings are actually getting worse. We also wanted to diagnose the reasons for this “disillusionment with Black Friday deals,” as Raji Srinivasan, professor of marketing for McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin puts it.

“There’s not a single explanation, but multiple factors going on,” she says. 

Here's what we found.

Black Friday prices are low, but not always the lowest.

If Black Friday is the only time you can get the lowest price on something, that makes it an exciting day to shop. But is it the only time to get the lowest price?

We looked at our own discount vaults, Amazon price history tools Keepa and CamelCamelCamel data, and old ads across stores. Here’s a sample of hot products and the prices they hit between Black Friday 2022 and October 2024 (the bolded products are the ones that hit their lowest price during a Black Friday sale):

In total, we looked at nine products. Four of them hit their lowest price of the past two years during a Black Friday sale. Five others hit lower prices on some other date. Thanks to price tracking tools, the internet, and their own experience, shoppers are now trained to know that it can be better to wait it out for a better price, and that could be making them second-guess the power of Black Friday. According to Srinivasan, there’s a psychology principle called “persuasion knowledge” at play here. 

Persuasion knowledge (n.) Your understanding of the tactics being used on you and your ability to use that to your advantage. 

“The basic idea,” Srinivasan says, “is that consumers have figured out what retailers are doing, and they’re going to wait to beat the retailers’ games.” 

In other words, while retailers do hype up Black Friday, they've been hitting shoppers with early Black Friday sales, clearance sales, after-Christmas blowouts, and big events like Black Friday in July for years. And shoppers know that they can often find a better price, or at least a similar one if they just wait.

The verdict: Black Friday pricing hasn’t been getting worse. In fact, most of the items we looked at fell in price from Black Friday 2022 to Black Friday 2023. But other days can have lower prices.

Our advice: Black Friday is still a smart time to shop because a lot of popular products are on sale at the same time. You can absolutely wait on items you don’t need immediately and see if they go lower (there's a good chance they will). But if you need to buy something in time for the holidays, Black Friday will still get you good deals. We’ll be sourcing the best BF deals we find here.

Black Friday discounts are bigger than ever, but there are other sales throughout the year that are just as good or better.

After looking at specific products, we wondered: what’s the average Black Friday discount? And has that average gotten better in recent years or worse? 

At KCL, we track hundreds of deals every day. So we filtered all the deals we found during the span of time from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday for 2021, 2022, and 2023, and then calculated the average percentage off that we saw:

• 2021 average percent off: 40.01%

• 2022 average percent off: 42.86% off

• 2023 average percent off: 46.2% off

So Black Friday deals have been getting a little better the past few years. Point, Black Friday! But then we pulled numbers for the most recent Prime Day in July (average of 48% off) and the most recent after-Christmas sale period (average of 52.4% off).

According to Srinivasan, shoppers’ awareness that there are other great times of year to shop may be making Black Friday seem less impressive. “The real deals are available post Christmas,” she says. “They’re really solid deals. So people are thinking, ‘I’ll just wait another four weeks.’”

True, you might not be able to wait after Christmas to get holiday gifts. But for those buying stuff for themselves, “they don’t feel that rush,” to shop on Black Friday, Srinivasan says.

The verdict: Black Friday isn’t getting worse, but it’s not the only ticket in town. Retailers throw other great sales, and shoppers know it.

Our advice: Have an ongoing list of things you need, and shop seasonally with our monthly stock-up guides. And be sure to set up alerts in our free app so you know when a major sale goes live (whether it’s Black Friday, Prime Day, Christmas clearance, or all of them). 

Black Friday TV deal prices are really low, but they may seem less exciting.

TVs are a Black Friday staple and a huge part of the hype. While tech has changed over time (just check out the DVD players in old Black Friday ads to see how much), the TV has been the Black Friday doorbuster in retailers’ ads as far back as we could find them. 

We reasoned: since TVs are such a big deal on Black Friday, if pricing is getting worse on those, so's Black Friday. 

So we looked at the lowest price you could get on a 65-inch 4K TV (starting in 2017, the year 4K really started replacing the previous technology) on Black Friday. We didn’t discriminate by brand (those change every year). We just found the cheapest 65-inch TV you could get across major national retailers (Walmart, Best Buy, and Target).

Cheapest 65-inch TV by year: 

• 2017: $598

• 2018: $398

• 2019: $278

• 2020: $228

• 2021: $499 (chip shortage year)

• 2022: $228

• 2023: $228

We can confidently say the 65-inch 4K TV got cheaper by leaps and bounds for several years running, dropping $200 between Black Friday 2017 and 2018, and by $120 the year after that. After a blip in 2021 (chip shortage, remember?), the TV fell to the point where you could get one on Black Friday for under $230. What a time to be alive.

But here’s the thing: TV prices have been falling over time anyway. In 2023, that $228 65-inch deal (a TCL TV from Walmart’s 2023 Black Friday sale) was $378 at full price but often discounted to $338. So that Black Friday deal is roughly a 33% - 40% discount, depending on how you look at it. 

And is a 33% - 40% TV discount really that exciting, historically? 

We took a look back in time at Black Friday TV doorbusters using old ads, CamelCamelCamel and Keepa price history data, and product announcements to get MSRP.

We found that probably the best TV doorbuster ever (at a major retailer, anyway) was in 2008, when Walmart had a 50-inch Samsung Plasma HD 50-inch screen for $798. That seems like a fortune today. But back then, Samsung’s 50-inch plasma TV was more than $2,500! That’s a 68% discount. (Yes, you had to go to the store at 5 a.m. for it.)

Honorable mention goes to 2022, when Best Buy had a 48-inch LG OLED TV for $569.99 (56% off).

In all the years we looked at (2004 - 2023), TV deals on Black Friday at major retailers (aside from the few big doorbusters) bounced around between 35% off and 45% off.

The verdict: It’s tough to make a call on whether TV deals on Black Friday have gotten better or worse. We haven’t seen 68% off in a while, but there’s no arguing you can get a better TV on Black Friday nowadays than you could 10 or 15 years ago (and for an extra 30% off or more). Plus, you don’t have to race through a store. We’ll take it.

Our advice: Black Friday is a time when a whole bunch of TVs will be on sale. If you find above 40% off these days on Black Friday, you’re getting a good TV deal. 

There are other reasons besides price that might be making shoppers think Black Friday has gotten worse.

Looking at price history helped us realize that it’s not really possible to say that Black Friday deals have gotten worse. But 47% of our survey respondents are saying so.

So what's killing the vibes? So we asked Srinivasan what else might be going on. 

Retailers like Temu and SheIn offer really cheap stuff all year.

“You’ve got these online Chinese retailers like SHEIN and Temu,” Srinivasan says. “The quality might not always be great, but the prices are just fantastic. I think in this inflationary environment, people are probably checking out these new online retailers, and the price points are quite low, and then they think the Black Friday deals aren’t quite as good.”

In other words, shoppers who’ve been trying out these online discount retailers all year and finding 90% off every other week might not get excited by 60% or 70% off on Black Friday.

“With these low-price Chinese retailers, every day is Black Friday,” Srinivasan says.

Underconsumption core is trending.

On TikTok and Instagram, underconsumption core is bubbling up as an aesthetic and lifestyle. It refers to the conscious choice to buy less. It’s the literal opposite of Black Friday and could be leading to more shoppers giving Black Friday deals the side-eye. 

“There is some consumption fatigue among younger consumers,” Srinivasan says. “There’s the question of, ‘How many times can you buy the next iPhone, or the next whatever?’ Especially with Gen Z consumers, I see them moving to a mindset of less is more.”

Long, early Black Friday sales might be making shoppers skeptical.

There’s been a pattern for the past several years of retailers starting Black Friday sales earlier or offering multiple waves of deals. And while more time to shop can be a good thing, it could also be making shoppers second-guess Black Friday.

“It creates this sense of, ‘Oh, you’re just trying to get me to buy stuff.’ There’s suspicion about the retailers’ intentions,” Srinivasan says.

There’s less in-store hype these days.

Since the pandemic, most major retailers have stayed closed on Thanksgiving, and our survey found that only 8% of shoppers plan to do all or even most of their shopping in stores on Black Friday this year. We also combed through all of last year’s Black Friday ads and found barely a handful of deals that were in store only. Pretty much everything was offered online as well. 

Even if online shopping is more convenient, the adrenaline rush that came from racing for in-store deals might be making today's Black Fridays seem boring.

“This might be the retailers eating their own lunch, moving their offline Black Friday to online Black Friday,” Srinivasan says. “It’s more convenient, but that could also be dampening Black Friday.”

Tip: If you like in-store fun, check out the Kohl's Black Friday sale and the JCPenney Black Friday sale. They're doing in-store giveaways in 2024.

Black Friday’s not going anywhere, though, and we’re here for it.

At the end of the day, Black Friday is the gateway to the holidays. Its deals come at a time shoppers really need and want them. And The National Retail Federation predicts this year’s spending will break records. 

“Christmas is fixed, the date is fixed,” Srinivasan says. “So I do expect retailers to continue doing Black Friday, whether it becomes more effective or ineffective.”

If you’re skeptical of Black Friday deals, we’d like to welcome you, because we don’t jump on just any deal either. 

We’ll be sharing our favorite vetted Black Friday deals from our professional deal hunters. 

Use our free KCL app to shop smart during Black Friday sales.

Plus, our free KCL app has the features you need to get the stuff you want at the best price possible in time for Christmas:

• Ask us to remind you when Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales go live: Our new Deal Planner feature lets you sign up for push notifications when Black Friday sales go live. Retailers start things early these days, and we’ll let you know the moment they do.

• Set up deal alerts for stores and product types: You can set up alerts for types of products and even specific stores. 

• Organize your list: Our My List feature is like a running shopping list. If you see a deal you like in the KCL app but aren’t quite ready to hit “check out,” you can save it with a single tap and find it on My List later. 

Related Reading:

• Here’s When Best Buy’s Black Friday Sale Starts

• How to Navigate Walmart's Multi-Round Black Friday Sale

• Why You Shouldn't Sleep on the Kohl's Black Friday Sale