Valerie Fritts only has one more thing to get before she studies abroad in Spain next semester. With a flight booked and a visa stamped in her passport, Fritts said the only thing she is missing is a camera.
“I’ve put off buying one because it seems like they are so expensive,” said Fritts, a junior studying journalism. “When I went to Best Buy and realized things were much cheaper than normal, it was such great news.”
Fritts saw for herself the record-low prices on many types of electronics the rest of the country has been experiencing since the end of summer. Items such as digital cameras, flat-screen televisions and game systems have steadily decreased since the summer, according to the Consumer Electronics Association.
Local stores are planning to bank on customers looking for good deals.
“We are hoping that this year is going to be really big,” said Rose Taylor, Sears cashier manager. “I think that people have become more conscious of how much money they are spending, so they are willing to come out on that day because there are so many good deals.”
She added Sears extended its Black Friday sale to include the whole month.
According to Archer Road Radio Shack manager Brandon Gerhalen, most stores will do whatever it takes on Black Friday because they make more money on that one day than on any other day out of the year.
“You can equal a week’s worth of sales in one day,” Gerhalen said. “You might get two times the amount of people that buy in a single day, but those people will buy three or four times as much as they would normally buy.”
Fritts said she would love if prices continued to drop.
“That would mean my parents would be spending less money, and spending less money is always a good thing.”
Mark Rush, UF professor in the department of economics, is not surprised at the change in the price of electronics.
“The way these items are manufactured has progressed rapidly. This sort of technological progress has lowered the cost of their production, increased their supply and thereby lowered the price,” Rush said.
“I expect this is something of a wash from the overall economy-wide perspective, but from the perspective of electronic retailers versus other retailers of clothing and furniture, it can be very important.”
With regards to the holiday season, Rush said the drop in price is no coincidence. He said he suspects many electronics companies have schedules for changing and lowering prices around the holidays as one way for them to try to pick up sales.
