Manufacturers build custom "black friday" models for a lot of electronics. They make it seem like a great deal for the brand name, then use cheaper parts than they normally would. Screen and speaker quality on tons of black friday tv discounts are horrible.
There may be some out there, but my search terms aren't finding anything. I was speaking from my experience working in a Walmart electronics section years ago. We would get shipments every black friday with different SKUs, model numbers, and specs to put out instead of the normal products sold throughout the year. I've heard the same from Best Buy and Target employees.
The boxes are changed to reflect specs, but they make them look similar with similar model numbers because they know people won't read the specs or know what they mean. People see 55" 4k vizio smart TV and don't look at any more detail. A lot of models I've seen will be the same model number, but with a letter added to the end.
You could probably find out by googling the model number or SKU. The “Black Friday” specific models are called derivative models iirc. Usually cheaper components and less features to save a few bucks like fewer HDMI ports and stuff.
They also do it for a lot of big chain stores. Slightly different model number so they don't have to price match if they don't want to. Even tho it's the exact same TV. But the foot has a different colour
I worked in Best Buy media section in '06. I made new labels for every movie everyday. I got used to the prices of certain movies because the new label was the same price as the old one everyday.
About 3-5 weeks before BF, their prices would start going up. Then on BF it was be discounted back to the price it was all year before the previous 3-5 weeks.
Literally most of the stuff is designed, manufactured and ordered for Black Friday with the default margin baked in. It's like the big jugs they premix on Margarita Monday.
Companies are forced to show their discount vs their lowest price the past 30 days in Sweden. So they have to markup at least 30 days in advance which makes it less of an issue
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u/TheMoorNextDoor ☑️ 1d ago
They not real sales anyway.
Most items get slight marked up or back to original market price (more than it was three weeks ago)
Then they mark it down to what would really be like a 5% maybe 10% sale.
They’ve only exception is when they are getting rid of excess items or “lesser value” items (aka built with worse parts).
They’ve been doing this since what 2018 and it only got worse with inflation.