Thomas Hill, former Asda pricing lead and co-founder of HyperFinity, explains why Black Friday needs to change to reward loyal rather than single shoppers.

Back in 2013, Asda changed the face of sales events in the UK. Owned by US retailer Walmart, the supermarket decided to launch Black Friday, and I was part of the team that brought it over.

At the time, Black Friday did what it intended to do (and had done in America), which was provide genuine huge discounts on high-ticket items that people really wanted. The premise was simple: create a massive publicity stunt, so the media covers your deals, shows that you’ve got great offers and, consequently, drives significant footfall into your store.

And it worked. Everyone went crazy for it – the footfall in Asda was a ridiculous amount. Since then, however, Black Friday’s taken on a whole new meaning. Originally, it was, of course, one day, the fourth Friday in November. As a one-off stunt, with a few items with great deals, it worked fantastically – sales and footfall went massively up. But then it grew arms and legs and toes to become, in essence, a whole month, an industry-wide discount cycle.

What’s more, instead of simply driving footfall into stores, the phenomenon gained massive momentum online. Online sales from Black Friday now surpass in-store spending, and have been influenced by the dominant Amazon Prime Day campaigns (Prime Day is 2-3 days, twice a year).

What then happened is retailers fell into the trap of only being bothered about year-on-year comps (store revenue growth); whatever you did the year before, you had to improve a year later.

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