Source: Radio New Zealand
Retailers around Aotearoa have been promoting their Black Friday sales for weeks. RNZ Illustration / Nik Dirga / 123rf
Explainer – You can’t turn around with seeing a Black Friday advert this week. But where did it first come from?
The shopping sales event – officially taking place this Friday – is an American import that’s picked up speed among retailers since first migrating over here more than a decade ago. But why has it gained ground here?
Events labelled “Black Friday” sales have been going on all month long, as what was originally a single day has ramped up into a long-haul sales opportunity.
“Black Friday has become a really critical sales point in the retail calendar for retailers,” Retail NZ chief executive Carolyn Young said. “You know, you come out of winter and you’ve got new stock in store.”
Here’s some facts about Black Friday you can amuse your friends with as you wait in queues this week.
Where did Black Friday come from anyway?
The phrase “Black Friday” has been around for a long time, used at least as far back as the 1860s to refer to a stock market crash.
But it picked up a shopping link in the early 1960s when, according to many sources, shopping crowds and tourists for a holiday weekend sports match overwhelmed police in the US city of Philadelphia. The phrase took off, although there was an attempt to rebrand it as “Big Friday” by merchants who didn’t like the association with civil disorder.
By the 1980s, the term was pretty commonplace in America to describe big sales, and it’s expanded to include spinoffs like online-focused “Cyber Monday” as well.
In America, it comes the day after the major holiday Thanksgiving, which always falls on the fourth Thursday in November.
Thanksgiving is timed around the autumn harvest in the northern hemisphere and meant to be a day to celebrate blessings and family life, all orchestrated around big feasts of turkey, pumpkin pie and the like. While Thanksgiving is not a New Zealand holiday, some Americans living here do still mark it in their own ways.
Black Friday sales became a bit infamous for big queues and occasional viral brawls at stores in America, although those have largely faded away in recent years with the advent of online shopping.
People get an early start on Black Friday shopping deals at a Walmart Superstore on 22 November 2012 in Rosemead, California. Black Friday has since spread around the world. FREDERIC J. BROWN / AFP
So how did it end up in New Zealand?
We don’t do Thanksgiving, so why do we do Black Friday sales? Blame it on the almighty dollar.
“We are a low wage economy who love a bargain,” said Michael Lee, a professor of marketing at the University of Auckland.
It’s only in the last 10 to 15 years that Black Friday has had a regular spot in the New Zealand calendar.
Google Trends search data shows Black Friday searches first started to spike here around 2010, then began taking off like a rocket around 2017.
“Once retailers saw a bump in sales following Black Friday, they were quick to catch on and leverage it further,” Lee said. “Then things tend to self-perpetuate, like they often do in capitalism.”
“It’s the only four-day holiday in the American calendar, which is why it’s such a big piece in their retail calendar,” Young said.
“A lot of international trends do then flow down to New Zealand, much more so now especially with modern technology and communication. Everybody’s wanting to be able to get a part of that.”
Last year, payment provider data showed more than $175 million was spent at core retail merchants during Black Friday weekend.
While online shopping is big, it’s actually not a lot of Kiwis’ preferred way to shop, according to Retail NZ.
“In New Zealand, 85 percent of sales are made in store,” Young said. “So you know, everyone’s not going online to buy. They might go online and do the research and then after that they go into store to purchase.”
Retailers advertise their sales in 2024 in Auckland. Yiting Lin / RNZ
Is it really that big a deal for businesses?
Black Friday – and all the weeks of sales leading up to it – is now neck and neck with Boxing Day as the biggest sale period for retailers, although Boxing Day has the advantage as a single day.
“What we know from statistics from last year that for many stores, Black Friday either challenged or topped Boxing Day sales, which obviously in New Zealand’s environment is a really critical market,” Young said.
“It seems to help them at a relatively quiet time of year,” Lee said.
“It also makes sense that it would outstrip Boxing Day, since the majority of Kiwis still tend to do their Christmas shopping before Christmas, therefore might not have the funds to dive into a Boxing Day sale so soon after their Christmas expenditure.”
Retailers would obviously prefer not to see Kiwis swarming Temu and AliExpress for all their Black Friday details.
Young said buying from New Zealand stores helps the overall picture for the economy.
“If New Zealand consumers buy in New Zealand it’s going to help economic growth in New Zealand because the money will stay here. It creates jobs.”
Some companies have also pushed back against the overt commercialism of Black Friday and what’s being called excessive consumerism.
“Black Friday most definitely feeds into excessive consumption,” Lee said. “If Kiwis really want to support retailers I guess they would pay full price so that businesses could earn more profit, but who is really going to put a business’s bottom line before their own?”
Shops on Auckland’s Queen Street promote their Black Friday deals. Yiting Lin / RNZ
What about the high cost of living? Will that hurt sales this year?
Given the talk all year long about the cost of living and economic worries, Young said retailers are “still a little nervous, to be honest”.
“When you look at the economic climate that we’ve been working in and how difficult trading has been, retailers are looking for reasons to get people in store to get that foot traffic to get people to buy.
“We all know that we’ve been feeling the pinch of prices at the grocery for a number of reasons.”
As for consumers, their confidence is still low, Young said.
“We haven’t gotten into that positive territory of consumer confidence and despite having ongoing cuts to the Official Cash Rate, consumers are still telling us that they are worried about job security.”
Unemployment remains high. A big marker of that is more than 60 percent of Retail NZ members are not hiring additional staff this year for Christmas.
“They’re just rolling up their sleeves and doing more,” Young said. “It’s really unusual.”
“We’re hoping that we will see that flux of people coming into stores.”
People walk past a Black Friday Week Amazon advertisement in Warsaw, Poland, on 21 November 2025. ALEKSANDER KALKA / AFP
Why did it end up becoming “Black Friday month” for many businesses?
Unless you stay entirely away from the internet and media, you’ll have seen Black Friday ads as early as the last week of October. What was once considered a single day of big bargains now sprawls on for weeks.
Businesses are “now stuck in a promotions battle with every other retailer”, Lee said.
“You can absolutely get sales fatigue,” Young said. She said retailers should be careful not to overdo the hype and to deliver what they promise.
“Making sure that whatever it is you’re offering is a unique office compared to other times of the year. Black Friday is seen as a big marker and people are expecting to see significant discounts.”
“It’s critical to have trust and confidence in a retailer and in order to do that a retailer is going to need to make sure that they can back up the statements in their advertising. We know that the Consumer Guarantees Act and Fair Trading Act are there to support consumers so they they can make sure that the deals being offered by businesses are reputable.”
It also pays for smart shoppers to do a little legwork.
Consumer NZ has warned people to be careful not to be too swayed by “hype”.
Shoppers should “start looking online early about what are the products they’re after and what is the price now, and they’ll see what the price is when it goes on sale”, Young said. “Doing that online research is really critical.”
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
