TMID Editorial: Black Friday musings
Another Black Friday has come and gone, and while it remains a very important day for the business community, this year’s occasion returned mixed results.Feedback reported to the Malta Chamber of SMEs on Black Friday results indicated mixed out
Another Black Friday has come and gone, and while it remains a very important day for the business community, this year’s occasion returned mixed results.
Feedback reported to the Malta Chamber of SMEs on Black Friday results indicated mixed outcomes, with some businesses experiencing very positive sales and some reported increase in sales, and others reported a decline compared to the previous year.
With regards to average expenditure, some sectors reported lower than average spend. The performance of Black Friday was also influenced by location, with certain areas facing significant challenges.
It is interesting, and perhaps a slight surprise, to read such reports of how Black Friday – an American custom which has been absorbed into the Maltese business psyche over the last few years – was not as positive as in previous years.
For perhaps the first time we are seeing inklings of the country’s more general situation having an impact in how people behave economically. Thus far, topics such as the economy and such as inflation have been rife – yet restaurants have always remained full, people continue to travel, and occasions such as Black Friday remained periods of good business for all sectors.
The worse performance in some sectors is perhaps an indicator that people are beginning to control their spending a bit more than they used to. This within the context of inflation over the past year and of more and more people seemingly struggling to make ends meet may be somewhat telling of the economic situation of a band of society.
What is also interesting is how performance on Black Friday was influenced by location, with some areas facing more challenges than others. The Chamber of SMEs did not specify which areas were worse off and which were better off, but the assertion does lead one to speculate whether those worse off areas are the ones which have, in recent months, been more prone to vehicle traffic.
If this is the case, it wouldn’t be surprising – people are likely far less inclined to go somewhere where they know that the chances are that they’ll be spending a good chunk of their travel time stuck in a traffic jam.
It would be an example of how traffic jams not only impact the country’s productivity, its environment and people’s quality of life; but they also impact the economy and small businesses like this.
A part of this decline may also be down to more and more people seeing through what Black Friday is – which is ultimately an Americanised custom that has little if anything at all to do with Malta.
There is also a segment of the business community which appears to try to take advantage of this period by not actually lowering their prices at all when sale-time comes around, but rather instead upping the retail price before applying the ‘discount.’ People have become wiser to this, and social media holds various examples of it.
This in turn has an impact on how many people actually believe that they are getting a better deal out of shopping on Black Friday – and ultimately, if people don’t believe that Black Friday is a good deal, then it will be put to the wayside.
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