āBlack Friday delivered an important signal for the U.S. economy,ā Caila Schwartz, director of consumer insights at Salesforce, said in a statement. āOn the surface, sales were strong, hitting $18 billion, a 3% jump year-over-year. But with the average selling price for goods climbing 7%, U.S. shoppers continued to feel the bite of inflation.ā
https://www.retaildive.com/news/winners-losers-black-friday-2025/806610/
In the linked article, online discounts was a āloser;ā black friday discount percentages were consistent with 2024 discounts, but consumers still spent more actual dollars because inflation.
(.25) x < (.25) (x + .07x) 
For me personally as a shopper on Amazon, I put items that I might be interested in into my āsaved for laterā because Amazon alerts you when the prices of those items change. This way, I get to know what an actual typical price is for an item (lol Amazon has a little banner on one, ālowest price in 30 daysā; Iāve been tracking it for 90+ days and, no, thatās the only price for 30 days 
). Then when thereās a sales event, Iām looking at whether any discounted price actually reflects a true sale price and how often that item is listed at or below that price.
- If an item rarely dips below X price, even if X isnāt a ābigā discount, I will consider buying because it is unlikely to go lower.
- If an itemās sale price is below a certain price point, no matter what discount is claimed, Iāll consider buying.
- If an item usually has an auto-repricer in action (Sellers can tell), I usually just ignore it anyway because the couple of cents it migrates up and down all the time suggests to me that the Seller isnāt actually offering deals (just jockeying for BB, which is fine).
- On Amazon, many items had a BFCM ādiscountā listed and a struck-through list price with a sale priceāeven though I know that item regularly sells for less.
