On this November 26, 2025, the annual ritual of Black Friday is once again upon us. Yet for many discerning observers, the experience feels curiously muted. The banners proclaim “biggest savings ever” the countdown timers tick with theatrical urgency, and still the question lingers: where is the exhilaration that once accompanied these occasions? The answer, upon careful examination of the data, is both sobering and illuminating.

The Diminishing Depth of Discounts

A decade ago, Black Friday delivered genuine shocks to the system: mid-range laptops routinely fell by 40-50%, and premium electronics frequently surrendered a third of their value in a single dawn raid. Today the picture is markedly different. The average discount across major retailers in 2025 stands at approximately 38%, a modest improvement over last year’s 35%, yet far removed from the dramatic clearances of the past. Apple’s acclaimed 13-inch MacBook Air with the M4 chip, for instance, is offered at $749-a respectable 25% reduction from its $999 launch price and indeed its lowest price to date. Nevertheless, that same configuration hovered within $50 of this figure during October’s promotional events, suggesting continuity rather than revelation.

The phenomenon is widespread. High-performance SSDs from Samsung and Western Digital, once subject to clearances of 50-60%, now settle into the 28-35% range-genuine savings, certainly, but rarely the transformative bargains that once justified sleepless nights. Independent analysis by Which? in the United Kingdom revealed that 94% of John Lewis “Black Friday” prices were equal to or bettered at other points in the year, with a full 40% proving less competitive than ordinary trading periods. Such findings resonate across the Atlantic.

The Structural Evolution of the Sale

Several forces have converged to temper the event’s intensity. Black Friday is no longer a single frenetic day but an extended season that often begins in late October, diluting urgency and allowing retailers to calibrate reductions with surgical precision. Rising component costs, lingering supply-chain adjustments, and the prospect of renewed tariffs have encouraged cautious pricing strategies: manufacturers and retailers inflate recommended prices ahead of the season, then present more moderate reductions as extraordinary concessions.

National Retail Federation projections anticipate total holiday spending surpassing one trillion dollars for the first time-an increase of roughly 4% over 2024-yet the growth in Black Friday-Cyber Monday online sales is forecast at a more restrained 8.3%, reaching $11.7 billion. Deloitte’s pre-season survey of 1,200 consumers, conducted in October 2025, records an anticipated average spend of $622 per household during the extended weekend-a decline of 4% from the prior year and the first such contraction in half a decade.

The Power of Familiar Names

Perhaps the most poignant observation concerns brand loyalty itself. Retention rates remain extraordinary: Apple enjoys a 92% iPhone repurchase intention among existing owners, while Samsung follows at 77%. For many, the seamless continuity of ecosystem – iCloud libraries, shared continuity across devices, familial message threads-outweighs purely financial considerations. A 17% reduction on AirPods may be accepted with gratitude even when a functionally equivalent alternative from a respected challenger brand is available for considerably less, simply because departure feels like disruption.

Younger generations, often presumed to be the most price-sensitive, reveal a nuanced portrait. While 81% of the general audience switched at least one brand in the past year-primarily for cost reasons, -58% of 18-34-year-olds continue to choose iPhone over Android, drawn by familiarity and social cohesion as much as technical merit. The same cohort demonstrates growing enthusiasm for pre-owned and refurbished devices (expenditure in this segment rose 30% year-on-year), suggesting that the spell of prestige is not unbreakable, merely slow to dissolve.

Toward a More Discerning Future

The tools for emancipation are readily at hand. Price-history services such as CamelCamelCamel and Keepa expose the true trajectory of pricing over months, not moments. Refurbishment platforms frequently deliver near-new equipment at discounts approaching 70% of original cost, free from the theatrical constraints of seasonal events. Perhaps most radically, one may simply opt out of the choreography altogether-acquiring what is needed when the need arises, rather than when the calendar declares it auspicious.

Black Friday 2025 will undoubtedly be recorded as a commercial success. Beneath the triumphant headlines, however, lies a subtler narrative: a collective awakening to the difference between a genuine opportunity and a carefully staged performance. The choice, as ever, rests with the individual. Will we continue to celebrate orchestrated restraint, or will we begin to reward transparency and enduring value? The coming years will reveal which impulse proves the stronger.

The Numbers Beneath the Noise

If the earlier impression was one of subdued grandeur, the latest forecasts and early data, now crystallising on November 26, 2025, confirm the diagnosis rather than contradict it.
In the United States, the National Retail Federation still expects the broader holiday season to cross the symbolic $1 trillion threshold for the first time, a rise of 3.7-4.2% over 2024. Yet Black Friday-Cyber Monday online sales are projected to reach only $43.7 billion across the five-day stretch, an 8.3% increase that feels modest when set against the double-digit leaps of the post-pandemic years. Deloitte’s October survey of American consumers records an average intended spend of $622 for the extended weekend, a decline of 4% from 2024 and the first such fall in half a decade. The message is clear: wallets are opening, but not wide.

Across the Atlantic however – the United Kingdom offers a mirror with its own faint cracks. Barclays anticipates total Black Friday-related spending of £10.2-14 billion. This is a headline that sounds impressive until one notes that much of it represents money deliberately set aside earlier in the year rather than fresh discretionary outlay. Finder’s more conservative estimate places the weekend total closer to £3.9 billion, with the average participant parting with just £124, barely 2% more than in 2024. Statista’s broader measure of £9.52 billion across the four-day event still leaves per-capita figures stubbornly low, a reflection of a retail year that has, until November, remained essentially flat.

Continental Europe tells a similar story of restraint wrapped in activity. Klaviyo’s study of 1,750 consumers in the UK, France, and Germany finds that 81% have altered their purchasing behaviour because of living-cost pressures; 31% have traded down to cheaper brands, and 21% are consciously delaying purchases until the sales arrive. Transaction growth is forecast at a mere 2-3% year-on-year, a sharp deceleration from the 10% surges of recent seasons. Average order values are flat or falling as shoppers hunt value rather than volume. Even in markets such as France and Germany, where Black Friday has never enjoyed the quasi-religious status it holds in Anglo-Saxon countries, 44% of respondents still regard it as the most important shopping moment of the year, yet they do so with calculators firmly in hand.

For retailers, the implications are profound. Success in 2025 hinges less on the depth of a single headline discount and more on early engagement, personalised offers, and the seamless fusion of online and in-store experience. For consumers, the moment presents an opportunity: to treat Black Friday not as an irresistible siren call, but as one perfectly ordinary week among fifty-two in which to acquire what is genuinely needed, at a price that is genuinely fair.

The End of Blind Faith

Black Friday 2025 will be declared a triumph.

Billions will change hands, headlines will trumpet “record-breaking” figures, and retailers will breathe sighs of relief. Yet beneath the noise lies a subtler, more significant story: the gradual end of blind consumerism.
For the first time in years, average spending is falling in the United States, remaining almost static in the United Kingdom, and growing only by the thinnest of margins across Europe. Shoppers are still arriving, but they arrive differently: armed with price histories, fortified by second-hand marketplaces, and increasingly willing to walk away. The spell that once bound us to prestige brands, to the illusion that a 25% reduction on an inflated price equals genuine value, is weakening.

Apple may still command 92% repurchase loyalty and half the British smartphone market, but one in five of its own devotees now chooses refurbished devices rather than new ones. Gen Z, long caricatured as brand-obsessed, is leading the quiet rebellion: switching labels for cost, delaying purchases until the discount is real, and treating Black Friday as just another week rather than a sacred rite.
This is not the dramatic collapse of consumerism; it is its slow maturation.
We are moving from a world in which desire was manufactured by scarcity and spectacle, to one in which desire must earn its place through transparency, durability, and honest value. The tools for this shift (price trackers, refurbishment platforms, the simple discipline of waiting) are now in every pocket.
The banners will still flash, the countdown clocks will still tick, but more and more of us are learning to read the fine print, to recognise the choreography, and to decide, calmly and deliberately, whether the dance is still worth joining.

That, more than any single billion-pound total, may be the true legacy of Black Friday 2025: the moment when the spectacle finally began to lose its power over those who once watched it, wide-eyed, from the other side of the screen.

JK