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Comment by erikb | Hacker News Reader

Is there a Black Friday in Italy? I thought this would be a purely American thing.

A bunch of companies are desperately trying to make it a thing here in Denmark, as well. By the looks of it, they jack up their prices slightly about a month in advance, and then offer crappy 20-30% "rebates" on Black Friday.

It is simply not worth it.

Fight it. There's all kinds of collateral damage.

https://www.strongtowns.org/blackfridayparking/

Luckily, that isn't an issue here in Denmark. Not yet, at least.

This year, I am looking to see if a very specific configuration of laptop goes on sale on a local refurb dealer, and if it's not exactly what I want at a good (ie. heavily reduced) price, it's #buynothingday for me again this year.

This is why camelcamelcamel is awesome. You can see the price graph over time for each amazon product to see if it actually a good deal. I've been using it all morning and have bought a few things already.

American things become global things when they're marketed heavily enough. This is the kind of thing people mean when they say "cultural hegemony".

The biggest "cultural hegemony" is basically capitalism, though.

Companies have all the interest in having such events adopted locally, since it translates in more sales for them.

But yes, Halloween and Black Friday rank among the more recent and successful American imports in EU, just a few years ago they were virtually unknown.

It's a still primarily an American thing, however a lot of (mostly) online retailers such as amazon have started to have "Black Friday Sales", "Cyber Monday Week", etc.

I'm not sure how it is in the US but at least in Germany the offers and deals are pretty bad and/or not interesting - especially on amazon.

It's slowly spreading globally, like Halloween. Some stores are doing it in Japan now, and Amazon is doing "Cyber Monday".

It's just marketing. They make good money and the people see it on TV so they are happy to emulate.

Yes, it's just marketing.

Over the past few years it's become pretty huge in Sweden at least.

edit: at least retailers are pushing it heavily. I don't know if the general population is really into it.

It's mainly a marketing event. It was brought mainly from Amazon and then other chains picked it up to 'compete'.

It's starting to become a think in Poland as well.

It has become a big thing in Brazil as well

It's 2017. If something is american thing, it's a worldwide thing.

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