The hashtag #blackfriday saw nearly 3,7-million tweets globally on Friday as retailers across the globe marketed their heavily discounted products and services to consumers.
A relatively new concept for the South African market, we ranked 17th on the Twittersphere when it came to #blackfriday.
Traditionally, the day after Thanksgiving Day in the US, Black Friday has, at least since the 1930’s, marked the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. Retailers traditionally opened very early (sometimes even the night before) to offer promotional sales.
As was expected, the bulk of the tweets, 62,52%, originated in the US – however, #blackfriday made its presence felt across the globe. The UK contributed 15,47% to the day’s total tweets and even though South Africa ranked 17th place, it was still ahead of many large first world countries.
“Music and social media competitions still achieve good results as can be seen by the top retweets on 27 November,” says Marius Greeff, commercial director at Spark Media.
In South Africa, the Western Cape made the most use of #blackfriday with nearly 60% of the total, while Gauteng came in with 26,5% of the total South African tweets.
“Always in search of a bargain or two, globally, 55% of #blackfriday tweeters were women, and 88% of people, with an identifiable age, were aged 35 and over,” says Greeff.