If your entire Black Friday strategy involves stopping by the mall on the day after Thanksgiving, you might want to check out Retrevo’s guide to Black Friday buying. Not only do the Retrevo folks follow consumer electronics obsessively, they track pricing, availability and demand – you know, all the important information that’s a pain to hunt down. The guide includes top deals in different categories as well as some common sense tips for how to get what you want at the start of the holiday season while forking over the least amount of cash. One of my takeaways? Oddly, shopping at Staples looks like a really good bet for cheap CE stocking stuffers.
Not listed in the Black Friday guide, but equally important from my point of view, is Retrevo’s analysis of trends in CE pricing and demand. I discovered very recently that the site now has a feature called Retrevo Pulse, which aggregates CE buying data and shows real-time analytics. Way cool. For example, looking at recent trends for GPS units, it appears that prices have leveled off and demand is on the upswing after a four-month decline. I asked my contact at Retrevo for other recent findings, and here’s what he listed:
Talk about good intelligence for your seasonal CE shopping.
