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DALLAS (CBS11) – In today’s world of on-line shopping and year round sales is Black Friday really worth it?
One Dallas based retail expert with 30 years of experience said stay home!
Steve Dennis is the president of SageBerry Consulting and former Senior Vice President of Strategy and Marketing for the Neiman Marcus Group.
Before joining Neiman Marcus, Dennis held leadership positions with Sears, including Acting Chief Strategy Officer, Lands’ End acquisition integration team leader and Vice President-Multichannel Integration.
Dennis wrote a post titled “Bleak Friday” on his blog, the art & science of customer-centricity, blasting the popular shopping day.
“To me, it’s kind of a soul crushing kind of thing to go shopping on Black Friday,” said Dennis.
Dennis said research shows Black Friday is not the biggest shopping day of the year.
“For the most part, the biggest shopping holiday is the Saturday before Christmas. I think typically it falls third or fourth in terms of biggest shopping days,” said Dennis.
His next reason, Black Friday success or failure is mostly meaningless.
“There is actually no correlation between whether you have good or bad Black Friday and how the industry does or how a retailer does. To me the focus on how people do on Black Friday is pretty irrelevant,” said Dennis.
Dennis believes for consumers, it’s mostly a con.
“Other than door busters or those special deals for the most part you are probably better off waiting,” said Dennis.
Dennis’ last reason–he believes the customer experience is terrible.
“To me, it’s teeming throngs or people, long lines. It’s just such a hassle,” said Dennis.
Dennis said if you must shop on Black Friday, winter weather apparel is your best bet on getting a deal this year.
Retailers are reporting a high inventory of clothes so look for deep discounts on things like sweaters, coats and scarves.
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