Coming to a shop near you: The great Black Friday bluff

How to handle the event presents a strategic challenge for retailers, writes James Moore – do they drop prices to rock-bottom or try to avoid the sales completely?

For shops, it’s a case of damned if they do and damned if they don’t (AFP)

We’re now just seven days away from Black Friday, an event most retailers would probably admit to calling something less polite away from prying eyes and ears. When it comes to taking part in this least welcome of American imports, they’re really damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

How to navigate it – Black Friday lasts for the best part of a week or more in most cases – leaves Britain’s retail gurus on the horns of a strategic dilemma.

They either offer a bunch of ker-azy deals and sacrifice their already wafer-thin margins in the hope of tempting a wave of shoppers to bail them out, or they shun the event and get killed in the aftermath.