Consumer Passion

Utterli Mobile Black Friday Podcast

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Black Friday Underway: Amazon.com 'Customers Vote' Lets Consumers Battle and Decide Most Ridiculous Deals of the Season

It's in the wee hours of Friday morning ... Black Friday 2008 ... the day retailers kick off a slew of outrageous deals to tempt offline and online shoppers to part with their dwindling dollars.  This Thanksgiving weekend will be a closely watched and dissected canary in the economy coal mine, an early glimpse into what could be a sluggish shopping season.

One of my favorite retail events is Amazon's Customers Vote.   It works like this:

• Amazon places three products against each other in six voting rounds: Go Blu-, Go Play, Go High-Def, Go Mobile, Go Your Way, and Go Crazy. Customers vote for the deal they want in each of six rounds. Whichever deal gets the most votes will be offered at the steepest savings (or winning price). The other two items will be offered at slightly lower savings (or runner-up price) but will still be sweet deals.  Then a limited number of customers are selected at random to participate in the buying round,  where they race to buy deals for that round.   

This year's potential winning deals include a Samsung 46-Inch 1080p HDTV for $699, an ASUS Eee PC 900 Netbook for $129 and a KitchenAid Professional Stand Mixer for $69.  For complete details, go to the Customers Vote page and check the FAQ.  It looks like the biggest difference between this year's consumer generated 'sweet deals' event and last years is that this year it's a race.  Amazon will invite more customers to participate in the buying round than they have available deals.  So get your competitive juices flowing if you're on the hunt for a too-good-to-be-believed deal. 

Amazon has a central Black Friday page with a Gold Box featuring hourly deals and limited time specials on thousands of items.  A quick look shows popular products offered at discounts ranging from 30-60%. 

I'll be keeping track of Black Friday numbers for brick and mortar and online retailers, and monitoring Cyber Monday sales as well.  Cyber Monday, coined in 2005 by the Naional Retail Federation, is normally the biggest shopping day for online retailers.