“Only today and only now!”: How “black Fridays” pump money out of us
Dmitry Kurkin
When in the early nineties, students of Nanjing University invented to celebrate the Bachelor’s Day on November 11 (11.11, the date with the most units, according to Chinese beliefs, promises great luck to single people), they could hardly foresee that in just twenty years their sweet joke would turn into a global shopping orgy. Meanwhile, this is exactly what happened.
Nine years ago, the Chinese online retail giant, Alibaba, turned the bachelor's day into the local counterpart of the American “Black Friday,” whose profits are growing exponentially. "In 2013, we were selling goods for 5.14 billion dollars in one day. Today we sell the same for an hour," commented Daniel Zhang, head of the Alibaba Group, in 2016 (in 2018, the figure rose to 30.6 billion dollars ). These delicious figures would be impossible if the marketing specialists didn’t have the simplest tool - sales that artificially inflate demand, and the buyer had the simplest temptation to spend less and buy more. But the marketer is guaranteed to be in the black, while the buyer ...
Bachelor's Day is a great example of how to convince millions of people that the annual discount race is a prestigious tournament and a tradition in some way. Even if the tradition was invented some two years ago. The idea that it would be nice to celebrate special days with some kind of purchase did not occur in people yesterday. But the “black Friday”, from which the bachelor’s day was written off, and the “cyber monday” that split from it, certainly stand out against the background of numerous holidays, the proximity of which usually means crowds in hypermarkets and retail chains. February 14 and March 8, Halloween and Easter, the days of Beaujolais Nouveau and St. Patrick and various versions of the New Year, appropriated by marketers, at least have historical roots and symbolism. Sales days were originally invented for the sake of sales. They, too, can come up with a symbolic content - Americans with low incomes “black Friday” made it possible to buy for Christmas - but the leitmotif will remain the same: “Go and buy!”
The problem of consumerism is not that modern man buys anything at all, but that he buys what he doesn’t really need
In their own sales, there is nothing shameful, only stocks like “Black Friday” not only turn customers into a pack of angry wolves (collections of fights in supermarkets look not so much funny as scary), but also work like a switch, disconnecting logic with one touch, self-control and the ability to plan a personal budget, no matter how well it is pumped. The problem of consumerism is not that modern man buys anything at all, but that he buys what he doesn’t really need.
Any of us is a businessman or a businesswoman: although we are not aware of this, we make a deal every time we go to the store, physical and virtual. The skill of the buyer, among other things, includes the ability to withdraw his hand in time, recognizing a trick. This Jedi mastery does not come by itself, it is acquired through trial and error. But the feeling of superiority from what you did not buy may be as strong as the joy of buying: you will not confuse it with anything, seeing how the thing you refused to take at a discount is sold at an even greater discount. The overwhelming majority of marketing campaigns of “Black Friday” and similar shopping marathons are reduced to whipping up the moment: “Only today and only now!” But is this true in a world where large discount promotions take place almost every two to three months, and small ones - every day (the same red, yellow, and green price tags in grocery stores)?
In a sense, “Black Friday” is also a universal test, which allows you to assess what percentage of the money you earn is spent on useless nonsense. Make a list of what you bought during the discount fever, set it aside for two or three months, and then check out what you really bought from the purchase and how much you saved on these purchases (number A), and how much - be honest with yourself - went to things collecting dust in the closet (number B). If A at least doubles B, this is a good reason to think.
PHOTO: Maksim Kostenko - stock.adobe.com