Brandwatch Bulletin #143: Is Black Friday Back?

Let’s recap.

2 December 2022

We don’t know about you, but our inboxes were flooded with brands showing off their wares for Black Friday this year. It’s hard to ignore the onslaught of discounts, sales, and deals.

But how did this year’s Black Friday compare to previous years? As the precursor to the holiday season and a key event in the consumer calendar, it’s an important event to analyze for retailers.

Let’s see if consumers still care about the discounts, or are days like #OptOutside and Buy Nothing Day taking the limelight?

Let’s get to it.

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Consumer conversations

What started as a novelty holiday in the early 2000s had become a global phenomenon by the 2010s. It became a real craze, one that saw long lines, in-store fights, and even people getting killed or injured in stampedes.

With more consumers entering the online world during the 2010s, the Black Friday frenzy became digital and we were able to pick up on the rapidly growing online conversation. Yet, a decade later, online chatter about the holiday started to fall. In 2020 unique authors discussing Black Friday were the lowest they had ever been.

People had other things on their minds that year. Brands weren’t participating as heavily in Black Friday, and consumers weren’t as interested in chatting about the holiday online. Plus, closed shops, social distancing, and other lockdown measures significantly impacted in-person shopping experiences. At the time we found 235k mentions from people who had taken to online sales because they either didn’t feel comfortable shopping in store or were subject to stay-at-home orders.

But as we can see in our first chart, there are early signs of a turnaround. Black Friday mentions have increased year-on-year twice in a row, something that hasn’t happened since 2012. The increase over time is modest, but not insignificant.

Of course, this doesn’t automatically translate to more business; these growing conversations could be dominated by anti-Black Friday posts. Sustainability is an important issue to many people, so is the rampant commercialism of this sales bonanza drawing criticism?

Apparently not.

Sentiment towards Black Friday remains steady year on year. Since 2016 the percentage of negative sentiment in online conversations has remained around 57-60%.

Shifting spending habits

With the cost of living and inflation at a high, this has undoubtedly had an impact on Black Friday spending – just not in the way you might expect.

Online sales during Black Friday rose 2.3% this year. Why? It seems many consumers were jumping on the Black Friday bandwagon out of necessity. At a time when many are penny pinching, the deals and discounts offered on the Black Friday weekend present an excellent opportunity to save some money.

Big corporations undoubtedly got their share, but what about the smaller players? Enter #SmallBusinessSaturday.

What started as an initiative from American Express in 2010 grew into a bigger trend than the credit card brand might have imagined. The aim was to encourage holiday shoppers to patronize small brick and mortar businesses.

We tracked mentions of the highly successful Small Business Saturday campaign since 2015 to see how the narrative around shopping locally is changing. Unfortunately for the little guys, hype around the campaign is in decline.

Mentions about Small Business Saturday are at their lowest in the time we studied. Why? With inflation at a high, consumers are looking for the best deals. Bigger brands can naturally offer higher discounts, so it looks like small businesses may have lost out this year.

It’s not all bad, though. While the data doesn’t show an increased interest in the campaign, Small Business Saturday is discussed very positively. In fact, this holiday has the highest percentage of positive sentiment when compared to Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Buy Nothing Day.

This year, a whopping 95% of sentiment-categorized mentions about Small Business Saturday were positive. That’s massive.

Even though consumers are struggling to do so, shoppers love opting for local stores when they can. Small businesses give people a sense of belonging, helping them feel more connected to their neighborhoods. That’s why there’s such a positive response to days like #SmallBusinessSaturday.

You can check out our blog on Black Friday for a more in-depth look at this year’s trends.

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See you next time,

The Brandwatch Bulletin team

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