Americans love deals. Why else do we camp outside our favorite stores after a big holiday feast or force ourselves awake at ungodly hours to browse the virtual shopping aisles? Truth is, many of us find pleasure in buying merchandise at the deepest discounts and knowing we beat our fellow sale-addicted shoppers to the punch.
But while Black Friday is traditionally associated with the best prices, we should pause from our spending and ask: How good of a deal am I really getting? According to the most recent holiday shopping survey from BestBlackFriday.com, 63 percent of respondents said Black Friday doesn’t offer the most unbeatable bargains of the year.
To separate myth from fact, the social finance website WalletHub compared the pre-Black Friday and actual Black Friday prices of a broad selection of items. Using the price difference of each item, WalletHub isolated the offers that are truly worth the hassle of participating in America’s biggest shopping craze.
The results: Books, movies and music will offer the most value on Black Friday 2015 relative to their current prices, while jewelry is expected to be the worst deal. Click here for more detailed findings.
Methodology
To identify the best and worst items to buy on Black Friday, WalletHub’s analysts first determined each item’s “Pre-Black Friday Price” by collecting its advertised price on Amazon.com between Oct. 26 and Nov. 19. For certain items, they collected two prices during that period and in such cases chose the lowest to represent the “Pre-Black Friday Price.”
They then collected the advertised price on 2015 Black Friday Ads for the same item on Black Friday in order to determine its “Black Friday Price.” The sample excludes deals that did not have calculable percentage markdowns.
Finally, they ranked the items according to the overall difference in their prices between the two dates and determined which products would pay off the most for a shopper’s Black Friday hassle.
Please note that Amazon did not provide all the requested info for all their Black Friday deals. As a result, some deals could not be included in the calculations.