What started as a one-day import from the US has morphed into a month-long marketing siege: “early deals”, “Black Friday week”, “Cyber Week”, “extended Cyber Week”… and then straight into Christmas sales. Retailers are hooked on discounts, customers are trained to wait for them, and the supposed savings often aren’t even real.
In this article I’ll argue that Black Friday, as we now run it in the UK, needs to stop – or at least be radically scaled back – and I’ll lean on data and reputable sources rather than just vibes.
The short version: what’s gone wrong?
Here are the big problems we’ll dig into:
- It’s no longer a day – it’s a month-long “discount season”: UK retailers now frame all of November as a promotional period, turning Black Friday into a strategy rather than an event.
Source: Escapade PR - Many “discounts” aren’t real discounts: Consumer group Which? has repeatedly found that most Black Friday “deals” were the same price or cheaper at other times of the year.
Source: The Times - Customers are learning to hold back normal spending: Official figures show retail sales dropping in October as shoppers delay purchases in anticipation of November discounts.
Source: The Guardian - It’s not our holiday: Black Friday exists because of US Thanksgiving. We don’t celebrate Thanksgiving in the UK; we’ve just imported the sale without the cultural context.
Source: Polyspiral - It undermines the run-up to Christmas: Retailers are slashing prices right before what should be the most profitable trading period of the year, often just dragging demand forward or sideways rather than creating anything new.
Source: CEBR - It’s environmentally disastrous and encourages waste: Black Friday drives over-consumption, huge spikes in deliveries and returns, and millions of tonnes of waste in the UK alone.
Source: Business Waste - It rewards hype over value: The brands that win Black Friday are often those with the sharpest psychological tricks, not necessarily the fairest pricing or most sustainable products. Regulators are now intervening.
Source: Competition & Markets
Let’s unpack each of these.
1. From one mad Friday to a month-long marketing marathon
Black Friday used to be a single day: the Friday after Thanksgiving when US retailers kicked off the holiday shopping season. The term migrated to the UK around 2010, driven largely by Amazon and then the big supermarkets and electronics chains.
Fast-forward to now, and the definition has changed completely:
- PR agencies and retail analysts now describe Black Friday as a “digital-first, month-long retail strategy”, not a single day.
- UK retail data from Experian and Reward, covering over 1.4 billion transactions across 4,000 brands, shows that in 2024 October and December actually outperformed November – because big promotions now run right across the quarter, not just around a single date.
- Even hospitality venues openly admit they run Black Friday offers throughout November rather than on the day itself.
What that means in practice:
- Instead of giving consumers one clearly defined “bargain day”, we get weeks of constant discount messaging.
- Retailers feel forced into an arms race – “early access”, “VIP week”, “last chance”, “extended sale” – which erodes margins without necessarily increasing total sales.
- Shoppers get fatigue and confusion: if everything is “unmissable” for four weeks, nothing is.
This is the first big reason to question Black Friday in the UK: it’s not a day any more, it’s a structural shift towards permanent discounting.
2. Most “deals” aren’t actually deals
The uncomfortable truth is that a lot of Black Friday “bargains” aren’t special. Consumer groups and regulators have been saying this for years.
Recent investigations by Which? (reported by Sky News and The Times) found:
- Around 80% of products in last year’s Black Friday season were not at their best price during the promotion period.
- Tracking 175 products over 12 months, Which? found 83% were cheaper or the same price at other times of the year, and at one major retailer, 94% of Black Friday deals were matched or beaten outside the sale.
At the same time, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has:
- Issued guidance warning that some eye-catching savings can be misleading, especially when retailers use inflated “was” prices or short-lived higher prices before slashing them.
- Launched a major consumer-protection drive on online pricing practices, opening investigations into firms and sending advisory letters to 100 businesses.
So when you see:
Was £999, now £599 – SAVE 40%
…it may well mean “was £599 for most of the year, briefly put up to £999 last month, now back to £599”.
If the same product has repeatedly been cheaper before or after Black Friday, the “deal” is mostly theatre. And that theatre erodes trust – both in retailers and in the whole idea of sales.
3. How Black Friday is training customers to wait
One of the most damaging side-effects of perpetual discounting is the change in consumer behaviour.
We’re no longer just taking advantage of a bargain; we’re structuring our entire purchasing decisions around anticipated discounts.
Recent data backs this up:
- The British Retail Consortium and Barclays have reported that non-food retail sales were essentially flat year-on-year in October, with categories like appliances and footwear weakening – in part because customers were holding off for Black Friday deals.
- Official ONS data shows UK retail sales falling by 1.1% month-on-month in October, with analysts explicitly linking the drop to shoppers waiting for Black Friday and uncertainty around the budget.
On the other side of the equation:
- CEBR estimates that Black Friday has added at least £1 billion of extra November retail spending every year since 2014, as purchasing is pulled into that window.
- Surveys consistently show around half of UK consumers now see Black Friday as their biggest shopping event of the year, ahead of Boxing Day.
Put simply:
People who might once have bought a laptop in September, or a washing machine in October, now sit on their hands until November because they expect a sale.
For retailers, that means:
- Volatile, spiky demand instead of steady sales.
- Increased pressure on logistics, customer service and cash flow.
- A depressing reality where customers assume “only fools pay full price”.
For consumers, it can mean:
- Delayed essential purchases (putting off a replacement appliance or winter clothing in the hope of a better deal).
- More impulse spending when the big day arrives – because “if I don’t buy it now, I’m losing money”, even if the item wasn’t needed in the first place.
4. Black Friday is built on a holiday we don’t celebrate
Black Friday isn’t just a random date; it exists because of Thanksgiving.
In the US, the Friday after Thanksgiving is a de facto start of the holiday shopping season – a bridging day when many people are off work and already in a festive mindset. Retailers leaned into this with one-day doorbuster deals, which later expanded into Cyber Monday and “Cyber Week”.
In the UK:
- We don’t celebrate Thanksgiving at all – it’s not a bank holiday, there’s no family feast, and no cultural touchpoint.
- Black Friday arrived here around 2010 via Amazon and then spread rapidly through the major chains.
So we’ve imported the peak-discount day without the holiday that explains it. Instead of being a natural extension of a long weekend, it’s an artificial pressure point stuck into the calendar a few weeks before Christmas.
That has consequences:
- For many UK shoppers, Black Friday feels like a manufactured event – a marketing construct, not a tradition.
- It crowds out our own patterns and traditions (Boxing Day sales, January bargains) and compresses even more spending into an already expensive time of year.
- It can deepen financial stress: people are encouraged to “stock up while it’s cheap” even if that means putting purchases on credit weeks before Christmas.
5. Undermining the pre-Christmas trading period
One of the strangest aspects of Black Friday in the UK is when it happens.
For most retailers, November and December should be:
- The most profitable period of the year.
- The time when carefully planned Christmas campaigns, gift ranges and in-store experiences come together.
- A chance to sell at full margin to customers who genuinely need what you’re offering.
Instead, what we now see is:
- November completely dominated by discount messaging, often weeks before the actual Black Friday date.
- Retail data showing that spending is increasingly spread across October–December, with October and December outperforming November in 2024 as shoppers take advantage of wider seasonal promotions.
- Retailers effectively cannibalising their own Christmas trade, chasing volume with aggressive November discounts and then hoping customers still have money left for December.
For big, vertically integrated brands, that might be survivable. For smaller independents, it’s brutal:
- They can’t match the margin-slashing deals of global giants.
- They face customers who now expect “Black Friday-level” prices on everything from toys to tech.
- They risk being stuck with full-price stock in December because shoppers blew their budget in November on flashy online deals.
If there were strong evidence that Black Friday created new spending, that would be one thing. But much of the data suggests it mostly shifts and concentrates purchases, rather than expanding the total pie.
6. The environmental and social cost we’d rather not look at
Even if you ignore the cultural and economic issues, Black Friday is hard to defend environmentally.
Some key numbers:
- It’s estimated that Black Friday generates around 1.5 million tonnes of extra waste in the UK each year, roughly half of which is packaging.
- Multiple analyses suggest that around 80% of Black Friday purchases are thrown away or remain unused, echoing findings highlighted by the Green Alliance and others.
- UK deliveries from Black Friday sales in 2020 were estimated to emit over 429,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases – equivalent to hundreds of long-haul flights between London and New York.
And that’s before we talk about returns:
- In fashion retail, up to half of online clothing orders are returned at some brands, with the Monday after Black Friday (Cyber Monday) emerging as one of the biggest days for returns volumes.
- Processing returns is expensive and wasteful. Items are often written off, down-cycled or destroyed because it’s not economical to inspect, repackage and resell them – especially in fast fashion.
Then there’s the human side:
- Workers in warehouses, logistics and customer service face intense peaks in workload.
- We’ve seen protests and strikes around Black Friday at companies like Amazon, as staff push back against conditions during these peak periods.
Environmentally conscious consumers are noticing. Research from Mintel shows that over half of UK consumers are concerned about the environmental impact of over-consumption during Black Friday, even as many still participate.
So we end up with a weird double-bind:
We know it’s bad for the planet, but the combination of marketing pressure and fear of missing out keeps pulling us back in.
7. Black Friday rewards manipulation, not fairness
Modern Black Friday isn’t just about low prices; it’s about psychology.
Retailers lean heavily on tactics such as:
- Countdown timers and “only X left in stock” messages.
- Strikethrough prices that exaggerate the scale of the discount.
- Complex bundles where the “saving” is theoretical, based on inflated RRPs.
The CMA’s recent guidance and enforcement actions on online pricing practices show just how worried regulators are about these tactics:
They talk explicitly about avoiding pressure-selling, misleading presentation of price reductions, and “drip pricing” where charges are only revealed late in the journey.
Black Friday is the perfect playground for this behaviour:
- There’s limited time to research whether a deal is genuinely good.
- Consumers are bombarded simultaneously across email, social media, TV and in-store.
- The narrative of scarcity (“once it’s gone, it’s gone”) encourages snap decisions and overspending.
In other words, Black Friday doesn’t reward retailers who price fairly 12 months of the year. It rewards those who are best at playing games with numbers.
8. So what should the UK do instead?
This isn’t an argument for banning discounts or telling people they’re wrong to enjoy a bargain. It’s a call to ask whether Black Friday, as currently practised in the UK, actually serves us.
Some alternatives and improvements could include:
1. Shorten and simplify
- Retailers could commit to a defined, shorter promotion window – for example, a long weekend – instead of weeks of rolling offers.
- Clearer rules and voluntary codes around how “was” prices are set would make comparisons more honest.
2. Shift focus to genuine value
- Brands can highlight long-term value, durability and repairability rather than just headline discounts.
- Independent retailers could collaborate on local “shop small” events that celebrate service and community, not just prices.
3. Tie promotions to sustainability, not excess
- Some brands already use “Green Friday” or “Buy Nothing Day” campaigns to encourage repair, rental, or charity donations instead of impulse buying.
- Retailers could offer free repairs, trade-in credits or charitable donations rather than another 20% off code.
4. Re-centre our own seasonal patterns
- The UK already has Boxing Day and January sales traditions. There’s no reason we couldn’t dial down Black Friday and re-emphasise post-Christmas discounting, when people aren’t simultaneously trying to fund food, travel and presents.
5. Stronger enforcement of pricing rules
- The CMA’s new powers and investigations into online pricing are a good start. But these need to be backed by visible enforcement and meaningful penalties so that misleading practices aren’t just a cost of doing business.
Conclusion: Time to break up with Black Friday (or at least have “the talk”)
In less than 15 years, Black Friday has gone from a weird American import to the centrepiece of the UK shopping calendar.
But look at what’s come with it:
- A month-long discount circus instead of a coherent, honest sales event.
- “Deals” that are often no better – and sometimes worse – than prices at other times of the year.
- Shoppers delaying normal purchases, distorting the retail calendar and adding stress to already tight household budgets.
- Huge environmental costs, from extra deliveries and packaging to mountains of returns and waste.
- A marketing culture where the loudest hype beats the fairest price.
When you strip away the flashing banners and countdown timers, you’re left with a simple question:
Does Black Friday, as we do it in the UK, actually make life better for consumers, workers, small businesses or the planet?
Right now, the evidence suggests the answer is “not really”.
That doesn’t mean we can’t have sales, promotions or clever offers. But it does mean we should stop uncritically importing a US Thanksgiving tradition and ask what a healthier, more honest approach to seasonal pricing in the UK might look like.
Maybe the bravest – and most genuinely customer-friendly – move a UK brand could make in the next few years is the simplest one:
“We don’t do Black Friday. We price fairly all year.”