The Evolution of Black Friday: A Deep Dive into Best Buy's Ambitious Holiday Strategy

On the retail marketing calendar, Black Friday is being reinvented to better align with an ever-changing consumer psyche. With the holiday season getting closer, Best Buy has upped the ante with a Black Friday playbook as inventive as it is shopper-intense. It’s a bold move that sets a new benchmark, not only to see whether e-commerce leaders such as AMAZON have a response plan. Let’s break down Best Buy’s elaborate Black Friday playbook and what it might mean for retail.

Best Buy’s Black Friday Bonanza: Rolling Out the Red Carpet Early

A Festival of Deals

Best Buy has got mad. They want to own Black Friday. For you, for the retail industry, for the world. But Best Buy has radically reimagined a holiday season tradition: Black Friday, the official post-Thanksgiving Friday when holiday shopping traditionally begins, has in recent years become a one-day parade of early-bird bargains and special deals. But this year, Best Buy is determined to expand the event into a weeks-long carnival of doorbusters and deals. From November 8 through December 20, Best Buy intends to ‘release a steady stream of additional doorbusters and savings throughout the season’ as well as on Black Friday. Will AMAZON, Walmart, Target, and other retailers get in on the deal-stretching? Only time will tell.

The Early Bird Advantage

We’ve long heard about the ‘early Black Friday deals’. But Best Buy is taking things up a notch by unleashing these deals — the tech-filled appetisers to the holiday dinner that is the traditional Black Friday sales day — weeks ahead of tradition.

Best Buy Versus AMAZON: The Battle of Titans

The AMAZON Angle

And AMAZON has been known to set trends and break moulds. Best Buy has announced its Black Friday plans (last year’s site is live again already), setting the stage for AMAZON’s response. Will it extend its Black Friday deals? Or perhaps enhance its current price-matching policy?

Price Wars and Policies

One of the key aspects of the strategy is Best Buy’s Holiday Price Match Guarantee, ‘giving you peace of mind that you’re getting the absolute best price, any time of year, no regrets’. A customer-centric policy such as this might compel AMAZON to up its own guarantees and policies, solidifying its competitive advantage and customer loyalty.

Tech Titans and Tantalizing Deals

Both Best Buy and AMAZON are places of pilgrimage for tech worshippers With this year’s holiday sales focusing on tech gadgetry (ie, GoPro cameras, QLED TVs, robotic vacuums, etc), the two retailers’ roles as outposts of reaching the latest hardware will be showcased as they compete over customers and deals. Holiday shoppers will probably be the beneficiaries of this rivalry given the sheer breadth of deals that will be taking place on both platforms.

The Human Touch: Retailers Enhancing the Shopping Experience

App-Exclusive Deals

Instead, as now, it gives shoppers a personalised experience, letting them receive ‘Drop’ deals, which are only available through the company’s mobile app. It’s no great surprise that Best Buy has been doing just fine, even as the internet has made it easier than ever to avoid retail stores. Mobile apps actually drive traffic, whether from customers who are trying to please the retailer, or because the retailer has realised that having a relationship with the customer is more valuable than the actual sale. As though to retaliate, AMAZON has announced that it will be adding even more app-exclusive offerings. Then again, it could also be innovating.

Extended Hours and Extended Returns

Whether through extended store hours and a return policy that acknowledges the frazzled and multitasking holiday shopper, Best Buy’s changes reflect a keen sensitivity to what the consumers need most at this time of year. Its new customer-oriented policies might embolden AMAZON to examine its own to make sure that it is the most accommodating and forgiving choice for holiday shopping.

Looking Beyond the Deals: The Future of Black Friday

Best Buy’s bold moves, and perhaps AMAZON’s too, suggest that Black Friday has reached a new level of perpitude. As I said, it’s not so much a day anymore – not even a day spent scrambling in the aisles.

Understanding AMAZON

It’s important to see what’s happening here in terms of this retail arms race, but it’s also crucial to view it in the context of AMAZON’s impact on consumer behaviour and expectations. With its vast selection, fast and free delivery and customer-centric policies, it is a major force in global e-commerce. Any change AMAZON makes will influence the way retailers approach the holiday season. By putting out its holiday playbook this way, Best Buy has declared: ‘This is how we’re setting ourselves up for the holidays. How are you responding?

But the strategies that these retail giants – Best Buy and AMAZON – are rolling out for holiday shoppers reveal a holiday season that is less about deep discounts, and more about what’s important to shoppers and how their buying habits are evolving. Who will win the holiday shopping season? Shoppers, that’s who – with their generosity, that special glow from a bargain, and the time with family and friends to take in the joy of holiday shopping.