Last week, I ran some comment from price and product comparison site PriceSpy about Black Friday, one of the – if not the – biggest shopping days in the US.

PriceSpy got back in touch this week, with some stats on the Black Friday sales in NZ. Its NZ country manager Liisa Matinvesi-Bassett said despite the growing popularity of Black Friday, PriceSpy’s data revealed the average discount offered by retailers was lower than expected, at just 12 per cent per product (5% less than 2017).  Nearly a quarter of overall products (23 per cent) received a price reduction and just five per cent received a price increase (half of that seen from the previous two years).

“In terms of what people were looking to buy, the most ‘searched for’ shopping categories were mobile phones, headphones and gaming consoles, with the most popular products the PlayStation 4 Pro, Apple AirPods and the Nintendo Switch.

Martinvesi-Bassett said, interestingly, when PriceSpy looked further into the historical price information for the most searched for Black Friday products, two out of the three were actually found to be cheaper to buy at different times of the year:

PriceSpy says on Black Friday, the PlayStation 4 Pro was actually 4% more expensive than its lowest price, which was in early January; Apple AirPods proved to be 11% cheaper than it’s lowest price, which was in early July; and the Nintendo Switch was actually 6% more expensive than it’s lowest price, which was in early October.

The most popular sites for searches were PB Technologies, Harvey Norman and JB Hi-Fi.

So, anyone buy anything in the Black Friday sales? I didn’t.