Finding best deals: Black Friday is for retailers

There’s so much emphasis and attention on Black Friday, the day of sales after Thanksgiving in the states. People line up for hours before stores open at midnight in hopes that they’ll be able to get the best deal, but it looks like Black Friday isn’t even the day to get the best deals:

For higher-end electronics, Mr. de Grandpre’s trends show, shoppers should wait until the week after Thanksgiving.

“Black Friday is about cheap stuff at cheap prices, and I mean cheap in every connotation of the word,” Mr. de Grandpre said. Manufacturers like Dell or HP will allow their cheap laptops to be discounted via retailers on that Friday, but they will reserve markdowns through their own sites for later.

When later? Cyber Monday is a good day to buy.

On a whim, we found ourselves at a midnight Black Friday at the mall. I was like, “Eh, it shouldn’t be that busy this late at night.” So wrong. The avoidance of large crowds is enough of an incentive for me to wait. Although if I were a young, teenage girl in the market for a nice pair of boots, I suppose I might sing a different tune.

[New York Times via @drewconway]

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