Coronavirus Life + Arts

Black Friday shopping in a pandemic tips, precautions

Gerald Sastra/The Cougar

Gerald Sastra/The Cougar

This year, Black Friday falls on Nov. 27, and although turn out is unpredictable with the ongoing pandemic, retailers are still preparing for the big sales event.

Annually, many Americans take part in shopping on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. Aside from burning major Thanksgiving calories by going from store to store, people are taking advantage of the low prices and deals advertised in stores.

Recently, many stores were releasing their pre-Black Friday campaigns, enticing customers to buy items. A college student’s budget can be tight and Black Friday can help with alleviating those costs by cutting the price of expensive items. 

For finance junior Hannia Yeverino, this has been extremely helpful as she took advantage of some of the pre-Black Friday sales events. 

“I’m participating in the online deals. My laptop recently broke down, but I was able to buy a new one on sale with the early Black Friday deals,” Yeverino said. “Honestly, it helped a lot.”

Yevernio also encourages students to take advantage of the deals as they work through an increasingly virtual environment. She explained the markdowns on electronics can help students save money on items crucial in online learning.

That said, to fully gain the most of the deals retailers are providing, students can take note of these tips to shop on Black Friday:

Make a list

When prepping to buy things on Black Friday, it’s good to make a list of items that you want to buy.

Making a list helps narrow stores that contain the items you need and lowers the risk of impulse purchasing.

Once you narrow down the stores, you can narrow them even further by researching the deals they offer. When you find the store with the better deal, you can list it next to the corresponding item on the list.

To help with the researching process, BlackFriday.com is a website that can help people find and compare deals on a variety of products.

Set a shopping budget

Setting a shopping budget can help keep you on track and prioritize your items.

A budget can help avoid overspending, which can be easy to slip into. In addition to overspending, making a budget can set priority to items that you need the most and makes shopping easy.

Without one, it makes shopping hard since you have to reason out the prices against your estimated cost of expenditure.

Utilize student discounts

One of the perks of being a college student is having an abundance of retailers having discounts specifically for students.

Additional discounts can help students save more money on top of the sales stores are providing for Black Friday. Some stores that offer discounts for students include Apple, Dell and Best Buy.

While you can manually shop at your favorite stores and see if they have student discounts, some websites compile discounts and deals for students from different stores.

UNiDAYS and Student Beans are some examples of websites that put together a multitude of student discounts.

Shop Online and Pick Up in Store

Doing online pick up can help save a lot of time. Instead of going in-store, you can find what you need online and pick it up at the store.

If you’re someone who can easily get lost to find what you want in the store, this can be extremely helpful. It helps with limiting contact with other customers.

If you don’t want to go in-store and pick up your items, some stores have the option of curbside pick up. This option lets customers pick up their orders without stepping outside of their car. 

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