Headphones Are Black Friday's Biggest Spike

Nothing in consumer electronics spikes harder. Adobe Analytics measured online sales of Bluetooth headphones and speakers running 1,850% above their October rate on Cyber Monday — ahead of games consoles, smart home kit and computers.

That is worth knowing for two opposite reasons. The selection and the discounting are genuinely at their best. So is the pressure to buy the wrong thing quickly.

What the discount number actually means

Adobe found electronics carried the season’s deepest cuts, “peaked at 30.9% off listed price”. Computers reached 23.4% and televisions 24.3%.

Read the wording. Off listed price. A list price is what the manufacturer says a thing costs, not what it was selling for in October — and a headline percentage measured against a number nobody was paying is the oldest device in retail. The only discount that means anything is against what the item actually cost last month.

The part the sale is designed around

This is the finding worth carrying, and it is not about saving money.

Adobe reports that during the season the share of units sold that were the most expensive goods rose 20% against the rest of the year — and within electronics specifically, 56%.

So the dominant effect of discounting is not that people buy the same thing for less. It is that they buy a more expensive thing than they came for, and feel they saved. That is the mechanism, it works, and knowing it is most of the defence.

The timing has moved

Waiting for Cyber Monday used to be the advice. The data says the centre of gravity shifted: Cyber Monday still took the most money at $14.25 billion, but Black Friday grew faster — up 9.1% against Cyber Monday’s 7.1% — which Adobe attributes to consumers embracing earlier deals.

Twenty-five separate days cleared $4 billion, against eighteen the year before. The season is now weeks long, not a weekend, and the best price on a specific model is as likely to appear in early November as on the Monday.

What to actually do

• Decide the model before the sale, not during it. The research you do while a countdown timer is running is not research. Pick two or three candidates in October and wait for one of them, rather than choosing from whatever is discounted.
• Check the price history, not the percentage. A browser extension or price-tracking site will show what the thing cost in October. That is the only baseline that matters, and it takes ten seconds.
• Set the number you will pay in advance and hold it. This is the specific defence against the trade-up effect above, which is measurable and is aimed at you.
• Ignore codec badges when comparing. They advertise a ceiling conditions decide whether you reach — LDAC’s 990kbps is rarely 990kbps sets out why.
• Spend on fit before specification. A poor seal loses more bass than any feature on the box recovers, and better tips cost a few pounds against the hundreds a “better” model does.
• If nothing you actually wanted goes on sale, buy nothing. There will be another one in weeks. The data above is a description of a machine built to prevent you concluding that.