By Rebecca Styles
Research Lead | Hautū Rangahau
Don’t worry about FOMO this Black Friday. Follow our tips to work out whether you’re really getting a bargain.
Black Friday promises once-a-year bargains, but how real are the deals? Our price tracking reveals a mixed bag – in the past year, 40% of the products we tracked really were at their cheapest during the Black Friday and Boxing Day sales, while 60% hit their lowest point at other times of the year.
Here are five ways to make sure you’re getting a genuine bargain.
1. Do your homework
A bit of research will help you to decide whether you are getting a deal.
Our big box retailer price tracking shows regular special cycles: items spend one or two weeks on special, then the next two weeks at the usual price. Track prices to spot the pattern so you don’t get caught spending more than you have to.
If you’re a Consumer NZ member, you can let us do the legwork for you. Every week, we round up the best current Deals of the Week for the products we test.
Find the real deals
This year, we’re tracking the sales to help Consumer members spot the bona fide bargains, based on both price and performance.
2. Look past the sales hype
In our price tracking we come across retailers using vague sales language to suggest an item is on sale when it’s not the cheapest price.
Last year we outed Harvey Norman for promoting its products as a “great price”, “super deal”, “huge deal” or a “massive stock sellout” for 9 out of the 10 products we tracked, nearly every week we tracked them.
This continual promotional pricing, designed to give customers the impression they’re paying less than they usually would, is potentially misleading and a breach of the Fair Trading Act.
3. Ignore the RRP
In price tracking we’ve come across labels like “better than ½ price off RRP”.
We think these labels are potentially misleading. Recommended retail prices (RRP) are what a manufacturer suggests a retailer should charge for a product. But the retailer can charge whatever they like.
It can be misleading for a retailer to compare its prices to the RRP, unless it’s the genuine RRP and the retailer can show that the product is for sale at that price elsewhere.
4. Question scarcity claims
Scarcity messages like countdown clocks, limited offers and “only two left” create the feeling that unless you act immediately, you’ll miss out.
But it can be hard to tell whether scarcity messages are legit. They’re usually annoying and leave people feeling manipulated; other times they’re just not useful.
In 2022, online retailer 1-Day was fined $840,000 over misleading claims about the duration of deals and the amount of stock remaining. Its site was programmed to make stock appear to reduce over the course of the day, even when plenty remained.
5. Check that a special is genuine
A sale must be a genuine opportunity for shoppers to buy a product at a discounted price for a short period of time.
If a business continually sells a product at a discounted price, then that’s the usual selling price – it’s not a special.
When a retailer compares a sale price with an earlier price – for example, “was $100, now $50” – the “was” price must be genuine. The product must have been offered at that price for a reasonable period, rather than briefly marked up to create the appearance of a bigger discount.
The retailer also should not inflate the normal price of a product, knowing it won’t be bought at that price, only to discount it to get sales.
Clearance sales create a sense of urgency. They should only be used for clearing stock – you shouldn’t see clearance stock back on the shelves at full price after the sale.
Which Black Friday deals are real?
We compared the advertised prices of 49 Recommended Deals products on Black Friday and Boxing Day 2025. We also checked whether each product had been cheaper outside those peak sales periods from 28 November 2025 up until 9 October 2026.
We found that 40% of the products we tracked were at their cheapest either on Black Friday or in Boxing Day sales.
We found that:
29 products were cheaper outside of the peak Black Friday and Boxing Day sales period
14 products were the same price on Black Friday and at the Boxing Day sales
11 products were the cheapest on Boxing Day
only 3 products were at the cheapest we’d seen on Black Friday.
A note about our data: The categories overlap. For example, a product could have been the same price on Black Friday and Boxing Day, while also being cheaper at another point in the year.
Meanwhile, our Sentiment Tracking survey revealed how New Zealanders feel about the shopping frenzy. After Black Friday 2025, 28% of people said they felt pressured to take part in the sales.
“So much advertising everywhere. You almost feel a pressure of I need to buy something. Also, the sale lasted like a month!” one respondent said.
Others described a fear of missing a good deal. Some bought more than they intended, while others regretted impulse purchases.
Our survey found that 4 in 10 people felt Black Friday was mostly hype.
When is the best time to grab a bargain?
It pays to track prices for a few weeks to check whether you’re really getting a good deal. Here’s what we noticed across the products we tracked:
Stick vacs were generally the same sale price on Black Friday and Boxing Day, and were seldom on special outside that peak sales period.
Air fryers: 6 of the 8 we tracked were cheapest at other times of the year, including March, April, June and July.
Headphones: 4 of the 12 models we tracked were cheapest on Boxing Day, while the other 8 were cheaper at other times of the year.
Fridges were a mixed bag. Of the 6 we tracked, 2 were cheapest on Black Friday and 3 were cheaper outside the Black Friday and Boxing Day sales. One model was the same price on Black Friday and Boxing Day, and one was cheapest on Boxing Day; these categories overlap.
In the lead up to Black Friday, we’re tracking the sales on products we test to help Consumer members spot the bona fide bargains, based on both price and performance.
