All DealsDealNews Blog Consumer News Never Miss A Deal! Subscribe to the get daily email updates of the hottest deals, chosen by our experts. Get for the hottest deals chosen by our readers and our expert editorial staff. Thank You for Subscribing! Can't get enough deals? Subscribe to our personalized emails for even more of the deals you're interested in. Subscribe to Men's Clothing newsletter Subscribe to Women's Clothing newsletter Subscribe to Electronics newsletter Subscribe to Home & Garden newsletter Thank You For Joining DealNews! You will receive your first newsletter in less than 24 hours. Black Friday Price Matching Guide: What Walmart, Target, and More Will Offer Black Friday is right around the corner, and hordes of savvy shoppers are going to descend on malls near you to scoop up the best deals immediately. If you want another way to get the best Black Friday offers, you should look into price matching policies.
Here's a guide to understanding price matching, including some breakdowns of the Black Friday price matching policies for specific retailers. How to Get Black Friday Price Matching Step 1: Bring Proof of Lower Prices This is kind of a no-brainer, but you need to have proof of a lower price at a competitor if you want the store to give you price matched discounts. Bring a sales flyer with you that has the price you want the retailer to match, or have the item's sale page on a competitor's website loaded up on your smartphone to show the cashier. Walmart doesn't require a copy of the competitor's ad to have a price match in some cases, but most retailers do. You might get hassled if you show up with a photocopy of the flyer, or a screenshot of the price on your phone (rather than a live web page), since those could potentially be doctored in some way. Do note that retailers have different policies about price matching in general (and price matching on Black Friday in particular), so not all price matches will be possible.
We'll dish about that a little more in step four. Step 2: Know What Items Typically Qualify Some retailers offer price matching, but only for select items. In 2012, for example, we reported that J&R would honor price matching, but not on CDs or DVDs. Similarly, Fry's Electronics excluded select items from their price matching program. In addition, some retailers say they will price match any "local" retailer, but local can be a somewhat nebulous term that can vary from store to store. Ask the manager at the location where you shop what "local" means if you need additional clarification. Step 3: Don't Forget About Price Adjustments Whether you are shopping in-store or online, you should keep your eyes peeled for retailers who offer price adjustments. Price adjustments mean that if you can find the same item at the same store for less money at a later date, the store will offer you cash or store credit for the difference. So if you buy that TV for $399, but the store later drops the price to $350, you could stand to get cash back.
Not all retailers offer this perk, and of those that do, not all of them offer it during Black Friday. It's worth asking your cashier what the store's policy is for price adjustments, and for what time period the adjustment offer is valid. The only thing better than getting price matching on Black Friday is getting a sweet price adjustment a week later. Step 4: Double-Check the Store's Black Friday Price Matching Policy Some retail stores may have different policies during the ultra-competitive Black Friday sales rush, so it's important to understand the terms of each retailer. For example, Walmart has made headlines on past Black Fridays by offering "guaranteed doorbusters." If an item sold out, shoppers received Walmart vouchers that allowed them to buy the exact same item when it came back into stock, and at the same low Black Friday price. Check out the guide below to learn more about some of the biggest retailers and their policies on price matching for Black Friday.
We've included info about whether they honor price matching on Black Friday, as well as info about their general policies for online price matching. Price Matching Store Policies Price Matching for Black Friday: No , , , , , , ) Price Matching for Black Friday: No, but try asking the manager nicely , , , ) and online competitors (like Amazon) Price Matching for Black Friday: Yes, on select items bearing the Iron Egg Price Guarantee badge Match Online Prices: Yes, but not for auction sites Match Online Prices: Yes, for select televisions and cell phones Match Online Prices: Yes, for select competitors Bed, Bath & Beyond Price Matching for Black Friday: Yes (Terms do not indicate Black Friday is exempt) Match Online Prices: Yes, some conditions apply Readers, do you have any secret tips for getting lower Black Friday prices? Just wanna brag about the huge deals you got last year? Chime in below with your comments! Is the 'Holiday Creep' Actually Slowing Down?
Deals Go to Your Head: A Professor Explains Black Friday Psychology 11 Things NOT to Buy on Black Friday Tucker Cummings is a freelance writer based in New England. She's also written for Yahoo! TV and Tapscape. Follow her on Twitter @tuckercummings on Twitter for her musings on tech, TV, writing, and current events. You might also like Never Miss Another Deal Get the latest deals delivered straight to your inboxAmazon Books is now open for business in Seattle. The floor is hardwood and the shelves and displays are weighed down by beautiful, physical books. It looks and smells like any ordinary bookstore.But make no mistake. Amazon’s new store is the digital economy’s coming full circle -- flipping the model to tie together online and offline in a whole new way. It’s establishing land-based business on ecommerce prowess, and modeling the methodology of the next generation of retail.Related: 8 Shopping Habits of Millennials All Retailers Need to Know AboutAmazon is an operation born and raised online.
It speaks fluent “onlinese,” and in fact has written large chunks of the dictionary. It is the biggest, fastest and most innovative force shaping the way the world has been conducting commerce in the past 20 years, and it’s seared into the collective mind as the main deliverer of ecommerce Gospel. Now a mature 20-year-old juggernaut, the Seattle store isAmazon’s first brick-and-mortar consumer presence.From the get-go, the ecommerce giant never had the privilege of meeting clients on the sales floor, watching firsthand the effect of sales and promotions, rearranging displays according to changing tastes. But it had something so much better -- it had data. Ridiculous amounts of data.And by turning this data into smart, emotionally intelligent data, Amazon managed to give its customers so much added value that it changed forever the face of global commerce. Because Amazon did what every online business must do: It used customer data to really get to know its customers.Today, Amazon is effectively the world’s largest ecommerce search engine and the starting point for more consumer searches than Google.
Every Amazon operation is geared at making the customer feel that the store is his alley in the quest to find the most suitable product, price and delivery method. Amazon is able to achieve this exceptional feat by leveraging data to really understand the wants, needs and hesitations of individual shoppers. It also harnesses the collective consciousness through personal recommendations, cross recommendations and inter-personal references. The overall shopping experience is informative, personal and empowering.Bypassing the land-based phase has also enabled Amazon to offer competitive pricing. Without the expanses of store based operations -- rising mall rents, distribution costs and personnel salaries -- prices of books (and later on of other products too) were cut dramatically. During the past decade, online competition and the rise of ebooks were a major force behind the collapse of some of the world’s largest bookstore chains, including global player Borders and Angus & Robertson, previously Australia’s largest book retailer.
Related: How Brick-And-Mortar Stores Are Finding New Uses for SmartphonesIn Amazon’s case, data and innovation have outdone the traditional benefits of the physical world: immediacy, personal connection and physical contact. But Amazon knows that people still yearn for the shopping experience, the book right now, the bookseller’s recommendations, the thinking process that occurs in a book store -- even more than they yearn for endless variety or for shopping in bed. Perhaps it’s also no coincidence that this is the first year since the onslaught of digital readers that ebook sales fell dramatically in favor of physical books. A plot twist indeed.The new Seattle outlet leans on Amazon’s big data algorithms and customer-centric ideology to display to consumers just what they’re looking for in the format they’ve learned to know and love. In Amazon’s case, this means giving very broad context to books by curating them according to both editorial and popular parameters.
It also means that Amazon knows how its customers think. They know that in their browsing habits they need structure and information, as well as inspiration and some serendipity.The store showcases books with an online rating of at least four stars, tailored to its Seattle audience according to their documented Amazon reading data. ,” “,” “Highly rated -- 4.8 stars and above,” “Gifts for the gamers,” and “Our picks from Amazon’s 100 books to read in a lifetime.”Every spotlighted book comes with a quote from online readers’ reviews, a review count and a star rating. , giving customers the peace of mind to browse the books instead of comparing prices on their phones. Readers no longer have to choose between the physical buying experience and the online price.Amazon has come a very long way from its days as an online bookseller. Books now account for a tiny fraction of its overall sales, and the Seattle store is but a tiny fraction of that. But Amazon is signaling that the counterbalance between online and offline retail is changing in deeper and more meaningful ways than Black Friday deals -- and all retailers should be paying attention.