Are you ready to leverage/ignore Black Friday? SA shoppers becoming far more savvy, says researcher

Black Friday is upon us, but he's not hearing the usual noise or feeling the same buzz that normally accompanies this discount shopping day, remarks Stephen Grootes.

The Money Show host is not alone in this observation, says Kani Rajuili, research director at consultancy Foshizi.

Are consumers heeding the recurrent warnings to find a balance between smart choices and impulse buys?

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According to Rajuili, South African shoppers have become far more savvy in the years since Black Friday was introduced here in the early 2010s.

She agrees that part of this trend is that 'the busiest shopping day of the year', has gone mainstream.

But it's not that locals have shut off, as evidenced by retailers' sales figures.

What has happened is actually good news about the spending habits of a country notorious for its poor savings culture - people are realising that taking part in Black Friday should be more of a planned purchase that is researched ahead of time, Rajuili says.

And that is simply driven by the realisation over the years that in fact the discounts on offer generally don't match their expectations.

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"You are not actually getting things at near nothing! So, what is happening is that consumers are spending wisely the month ahead of Black Friday and know very well what they're going to be buying, and where they're going to be buying it."

Also, people are ready now to judge whether what they're eyeing is a good enough deal to spend their time on, and if it's not, to give it a miss and wait until the right deal comes along.

"That hype and that gimmickry around Black Friday has definitely waned - South Africans are now a lot more critical about how deep that discount is because we've been led to expect that we're going to save loads."

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