Many consumers believe they are scoring a great deal during Black Friday, Cyber Monday or other major shopping events – but are they? A new study from Oxylabs, a leading provider of web intelligence solutions, reveals that over 70% of products in major US marketplaces were actually more expensive on Black Friday compared to the week before.
Oxylabs tracked the prices of 61,172products across two major US e-commerce marketplaces from August 13 to November 29, 2024, using its Web Scraper API. The research focused on bestselling items across various categories, including video games, toys, electronics, home and kitchen appliances, sports and outdoor equipment, clothing, beauty products and office supplies. Pricing data has been observed on an hourly basis.
“We set out to analyse how the prices of various products fluctuated in the lead-up to Black Friday. Contrary to the aggressive advertising of massive savings, many of the items we examined were actually priced highest on Black Friday. This suggests that relying on major shopping events for the best deals may not be the smartest strategy,” said Rytis Ulys, Head of Data & Analytics at Oxylabs.
In the first marketplace it analysed, the discounted Black Friday price was the lowest price during the entire week prior to Black Friday in only 28% of cases. The remaining 72% of deals were not saving consumers any money. Looking into prices during the whole research duration, Oxylabs’ team found that about one in 10 products were cheaper or cost the same earlier this autumn.