Black Friday Trends: The Pre-Order thing is a Samsung innovation

Three days ago we spotted the unusual Black Friday Deals preorders (! [preorders of existing products; not unreleased products]) at Amazon but it turns out, this is not an Amazon “innovation” but a Samsung innovation. Similar Black Friday HDTV Deal “pre-orders” can be found at Samsung’s own website and at B&H Photo.

So far this consists of Samsung HDTVs. I don’t know if it will expand to digital cameras this year or in future years. But it is a new trend to watch as retailers are perhaps trying to zero in on shoppers who want good deals but don’t want the hassle of brick and mortar lines or deal-chasing on the internets when they can instead spend Thanksgiving weekend getting grilled by the Mother In Law 🙂

New twist: Prime Members get 30 minute Early Access to some (but not all) Amazon Lightning Deals

Amazon revealed a new twist today, a new feature for Prime members. For some of the items in the traditional Gold Box Lightning Deals, Amazon Prime members will get access to them 30 minutes before the general population does. It’s easier to explain with an example, look at the annotated screenshot crop of the Ape camera case below (click on the picture or open in new tab/window to see it at full size)…

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As you can see, the Ape case has the “Prime Early Access Deal” line. Only Lightning Deals that show this line are going to be available to Prime members for 30 minutes early. All the other items will go live at the same time for everybody. Here is an annotated screenshot example below of Upcoming Lightning Deals, some are Prime Early Access, some are not (click on the picture or open in new tab/window to see it at full size)…

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