3 Days To The Start Of 2016 ‘Black Friday’ Sales, Here Is What You Need To Know

Black Friday is the day following Thanksgiving Day in the United States (the fourth Thursday of November). Since the early 2000s, it has been regarded as the beginning of the Christmas shopping season in the US, and most major retailers open very early (and more recently during overnight hours) and offer promotional sales.

Black Friday is not an official holiday, but California and some other states observe “The Day after Thanksgiving” as a holiday for state government employees, sometimes in lieu of another federal holiday such as Columbus Day.

In Nigeria, this day has also been adopted by several online stores to sell promotional goods. For 2016, some of the leading online stores have announced their Black Friday sales programme; Konga will have its special sales between Friday, 18th November and Monday, November 21. Another leading store, Jumia will its own special sales between Monday, November 14 and Friday, November 25.

As at today (03/11/2016), one of the leading online stores, Jumia has disclosed the expected discounts for various categories of their goods. In its publicity, electronic goods will attract up to 50% discount; Television sets (30%), Game consoles (45%), Tablets (50%), Smartphones (50%) and laptop (30%).

Before the sales, online sales are expected to release a more comprehensive breakdown of sales in different categories of their market. For instance, last year, Jumia announced different discounts in various categories; In the Cameras & Electronics category, discount was up to 65%. Others include the Women’s Clothing and Men’s Clothing with 60% discount, Women’s and Men’s Accessories also had 50% discount, even as Men’s Shoes and Women’s Shoes got up to 55% discount.

Sales during Black Fridays are usually on first arrived, first served basis because of the huge traffic of online buyers who are always willing to participate in the greatly discounted sales.

If the statistics released by Konga on its Black Friday 2014 (Yakata Sales) is something to go by, the store had 5x the amount of its usual daily traffic recording a maximum 1,659 orders placed within an hour. The same record revealed that over $3.5M (N600m) was made in the sales last year.

Even with the statistics from several online stores recounting the success of the Black Friday sales in previous years, the recount of experiences by many social media users who participated in the sales have been mixed – some interesting and some are not palatable. Some people still do not believe the sales happened because they weren’t able to buy at the displayed discounted prices. Some have even gone hard on suspected online stores and labelling the Black Friday thing a scam.

For students of Obafemi Awolowo University who are willing to take advantage of this year’s Black Friday sales, here are some useful tips for you:

1.) Get money that will get you some items.
2.) Register with the online store(s) you wish to buy from during the Black Friday sales before the day. I’ll advise you have an account with more than one online store. Registration is free.
3.) Have a list of items you wish to buy during the sales so as to prevail over distractions that could arise from discounts you’ll see on other goods while trying to order.
4.) Make sure your devices are fully charged before the anticipated hours. There may be no power supply at the location where you will be accessing the internet at that time (especially for those that will be using the Wifi network).
5.) Locate a place where the signal of the network you will be using is strong. For those that will be using the INTECU service, areas like EDM, Health Centre have good reports.
6.) Sale is expected to begin 12:00am of the sale’s day. As such, it is advisable to start checking the portals of the online stores starting from that moment to be among the first buyers.
7.) Though I am aware Konga has announced an adjustment to its ‘Konga Pays’ service which offers a further 5% discounts for those that pay instantly with their credit cards, I strongly advise you opt for ‘Pay on delivery’ if available for the goods you wish to order. This is to ensure you confirm your order is in good condition before paying. I have a non-palatable experience with this.

NOTE: Black Friday sales will be coming up on almost all the major online stores (including Amazon, Ebay and others) across the globe.

Finally, remember to order something for OAU Peeps News Agency.

Goodluck!