Throughout late October and November, we have been covering Black Friday deals and sale dates pretty closely. With discounts starting especially early this year, there has been a lot of interest in what to buy and when to buy it, and we've been doing our best to provide those answers to our readers. Alongside our Black Friday coverage, we've also been running a poll asking people where they plan on doing most of their online shopping in 2023. Unsurprisingly, Amazon came out on top, and by quite a large margin ahead of the Amazon Black Friday sale.
The poll has been running only on Black Friday content, so the data collected is specific to IGN readers and folks who have found these pages via Google search. Below is the full breakdown of answers collected after a total of 18,000 votes, and you can vote in the poll yourself by scrolling to the bottom of this page.
Although most stores give you the option to shop online these days, it would appear as if Amazon still dominates the attention of online shoppers, especially during Black Friday. However, it's worth noting that 8.3% of those who answered this poll prefer to shop in stores. That number would likely go in favor of the retailers that have a brick-and-mortar location like Target, Best Buy, and Walmart.
Why Do People Prefer Amazon for Online Black Friday Shopping?
There are a couple of reasons why people prefer Amazon for Black Friday shopping we can speculate on. The first, and most obvious one, is simply how saturated Amazon is in the membership market. According to recent data, there are approximately 167 million Amazon Prime subscribers in the U.S. alone. Although companies Walmart, Target, and Best Buy, and Costco all have memberships that grant users benefits for online shopping, Amazon Prime is still way ahead of the game thanks to additional subscription benefits and Prime Video. Walmart has been making a big push to compete with Walmart+ this year, but the company still has long way to go.
The second reason is likely overall convenience. Amazon makes it really easy to shop online and they have pretty much everything. Not only that, they tend to automatically match prices based on competitors allowing them to take advantage of discounts that were originally exclusive to other online retailers. We've seen this with Amazon matching the Best Buy and Walmart early Black Friday sales on a large selection of items. So if you want the lowest price on something without having to do much research, you can usually assume that Amazon has it. Add in the magic of free 2-day shipping and it can become really hard to shop anywhere other than Amazon for most things, especially if you already have a membership.
Where Do You Plan on Shopping Online for Black Friday?
Are you planning on shopping the Amazon Black Friday sale or sticking to other retailers this year? Take our poll below or respond in the comments!
