Every year, the end of Autumn marks a period of major sales. Starting with Singles Day and Black Friday and continuing to the Christmas shopping spree, consumers are desperately searching for big discounts. According to a UK-based survey, 67% of respondents feel that growing living costs pressure them to look for deals, and 71% believe this helps them save money. But does it, really?
For years, tech products have been among the most susceptible to manipulative pricing, figuring in previous fake discounts research in the UK, France, and the US. Conducted during Black Friday 2024, the latter study found that 37% of the hottest tech products saw significant price hikes just before the event, making Black Friday’s offer look like a major deal. However, the study tracked fewer than a hundred products, prompting the question of whether this trend can be observed more widely.
To get a more comprehensive review of the tech market deals, we decided to employ Oxylabs’ extensive data collection infrastructure and examine the prevalence of manipulative discounts in two major US marketplaces. We used our Web Scraper API to track almost 10 thousand unique tech products from August 13 to November 29, 2024, and here is what we found.
Head of Data & Analytics at Oxylabs.
What is a fake discount? From legal definition to consumer utility
During our research, we tracked publicly available pricing data from 9714 unique products using US locations. We were especially interested in Black Friday 2024 and the discounts offered on this particular day. We based our research on legal definitions established in California, as it is considered to have the most explicitly defined rules — under Californian law, a ‘fake discount’ is observed if the seller cannot prove that discounted items have been regularly offered at their advertised former prices for a period of 3 months right before the discount.
After analyzing case law and recommendations, we decided to treat advertised former prices as “regularly offered” (or prevailing) in those cases when they were explicitly present at least 50% of the time during the 3 months period right before the discount. The drill was simple: if product X’s advertised former price was 270$ on Black Friday day, we checked if this product was actually offered for 270$ at least 50% of the time (45 days) in the 3-month period prior to the event.
We observed pricing data on an hourly basis, meaning that every unique product URL has been monitored 24 times per day. All tech products were randomly selected from different product departments; however, we made sure our analysis covered the most popular tech categories, such as video games, computers, cell phones, wearable technology, etc.
Furthermore, when analyzing data, we noticed that some discounts might not violate the laws but still be exploitative and unethical towards the consumer. Thus, we decided to perform additional research and check if consumers really benefited from the Black Friday promotions in major US marketplaces. To do so, we analyzed whether people could buy discounted Black Friday products for less money one week, two weeks, a month, and two months prior to this event. Because if they really could, waiting for Black Friday to hunt a major tech deal saved them no money.
Suspicious discounts — 75% of cases
The first thing that struck us when analyzing data was that out of 4645 discounted tech products offered on Black Friday day, only 2786 met the main criterion — they were sold in the marketplace for at least 90 days during the observed 3-month period. All others occurred on the marketplaces fleetingly, sometimes being listed for a few days only.
Out of these 2786 products, 75% (2099 tech products in total) didn’t meet the main legal criterion — their advertised former prices were not regularly offered for a substantial period of time before the Black Friday discount. The worst situation could be observed in the following categories: wearable technology (86.1%), cameras and photography equipment (81.1%), computers and their accessories (81.2%), and video games (80.4%). The cell phones category saw the least violations — 65% of cases.
Seeing these numbers, we wondered how tech categories compare to non-tech ones. During the entire research period, starting with August 13, 2024, we monitored prices for over 61 thousand different products in both tech and non-tech categories. Aggregated analysis of tech and non-tech products showed that 60% of the deals didn’t meet the main legal criterion, compared to 75% when analyzing only tech products. It roughly confirms that tech products are more susceptible to ‘fake’ deals — a suspicion already raised by previous research.
At this point, we can draw two conclusions. First, three out of four discounted tech products in two major US marketplaces on Black Friday could have been fake discounts or, at best, manipulative deals. Unfortunately, we cannot prove it undeniably due to the reasons presented below, which brings us to the second part of the research.
Legal yet exploitative? The consumer utility
If the product was listed for a shorter period than 90 days, to see if the discount is genuine, one must check whether the advertised reference price was a prevailing market price, i.e., perform competitor analysis. However, anyone with experience in ecommerce web intelligence knows that acquiring reliable competitor pricing data retrospectively is nearly impossible. There is also an option to check if the seller clearly and conspicuously stated in the advertisement the date when the alleged former price did prevail. However, it is unclear where and how this data should be presented on the marketplace’s website.
Thus, we witness a huge gap in legal regulation, at least in the US. In the case of digital commerce, the 90-day period is excessive as the majority of small sellers do not keep the products in the marketplace for so long — global ecommerce is too dynamic. However, in cases when sellers do not follow this requirement, it is extremely complicated for consumers or regulatory institutions to factually prove a ‘fake discount.’
To see if consumers really benefit from the questionable Black Friday tech ‘deals,’ we performed additional analysis and checked whether the consumers could save money buying the same products before the Black Friday event. Web intelligence we gathered showed that the discounted Black Friday price was the lowest price during the entire week prior to Black Friday in only 27% of cases. The remaining 73% of tech deals were not saving consumers any money.
The situation looks more positive when we look at product prices at least a couple of weeks before Black Friday event:
- 2 weeks prior to Black Friday — Black Friday price was the lowest price in 72% of cases;
- One month prior to Black Friday — Black Friday price was the lowest price in 78% of cases;
- Two months prior to Black Friday — Black Friday price was the lowest price in 83% of cases;
- Three months prior to Black Friday — Black Friday price was the lowest price in 85% of cases.
And yet, we can still infer from this data that only 1 out of 4 consumers could undoubtedly benefit from waiting specifically for the Black Friday instead of buying a product on any other day a week before the event. Moreover, we cannot be sure that the product’s price wasn’t artificially inflated at some point before the Black Friday as the first part of our research showed most deals do not strictly comply with legal regulation.
Hunting for deals in the age of AI
Although a significant percentage of suspicious discounts in major US marketplaces indeed surprised us, the trend isn’t new. Moreover, it has already been observed in other countries. In 2022, the European Commission inspected Black Friday sales, revealing that around 25% of price reduction announcements were inconsistent with EU law. An earlier study that monitored Black Friday deals in the UK showed that 85% of the discounted products had cost the same or less six months earlier.
Unfortunately, legal regulation alone is not enough to protect consumers. On the one hand, AI-driven web intelligence solutions enable regulators to keep tabs on thousands of websites simultaneously and monitor pricing changes on a large scale with relatively small resources. On the other hand, if the laws are too vague or don’t meet the new reality of the digital economy, they become fictional documents preventing efficient ways to enforce the rules.
AI tools make it easier for sellers to perform complex pricing manipulations. Unfortunately, manipulative discounts aren’t the only trap awaiting online shoppers in 2025. A recent study by originality.ai showed that during Black Friday, almost a third of product reviews from major ecommerce platforms, including Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart, were likely AI-generated. This makes it even harder for consumers to understand if the seller is reliable and the product is worth the money.
With AI bringing both positive and negative effects to the e-commerce industry, consumers should stay aware of many different manipulation tactics and think twice before getting caught in the hunt for ‘deals.’ Major tech news websites have regular articles about good tech deals in big marketplaces — this information might help if you are planning to buy some gadget. It feels just rational to try to save a penny, but it’s worth remembering that some tech deals, especially during major shopping events, might be nothing more than ghost discounts.
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