Black Friday used to mean a photograph of a queue, or a door that should not have opened that fast. This year the photograph was a laptop. American shoppers spent a record $11.8 billion online on the day, up 9.1% on last year. I read that on Saturday morning and then looked at our high street, which did not look like a record of anything. A few bags. A lot of walking past windows.
The other detail in the headline was the one that stayed with me. A lot of people used AI chatbots to compare prices. They were worried about tariffs pushing things up, so they asked a machine to hunt the cheaper version before they clicked. That is a new kind of shopping, and also an old one. People have always wanted value. They have just found a faster way to feel they did not get cheated.
In Business we talk about e-commerce and the high street as if they are two teams. Place is one of the ways firms compete: not only what they sell, but where you can buy it, and how easy it is to check that you are not being silly. Online shops can show you twenty headphones in a minute. A physical shop can let you hold one pair and talk yourself into them. This year the holding-and-talking side was quieter. Inflation and a softer job market made people more selective, which is a polite way of saying they did not want to spend money just because they were already in the building.
I understand the selectivity. If you are nervous about prices, you do not wander. You search. You ask a chatbot to line the numbers up, and you try to ignore the part of your brain that likes a red sale tag for emotional reasons. Value, in the textbook, is what you think you got for what you paid. Value, on a Friday night in November, is the relief of finding the same jumper for less, and the slight suspicion that the “less” was designed for you to find it.
My mum did not queue anywhere. She compared two things on her phone, bought one, and said she was done, as if the day had been a chore rather than an event. That is not a record-breaking story, but it matches the quieter shops. The record is happening in a browser. The high street is left with the people who needed something today, or who still like to touch a coat before they take it home.
I am not against the hunt. I like a precise number. I also think something gets lost when the whole country shops like it is sitting an exam. A laptop or a jumper is easy to compare and easy to postpone, which is why a chatbot is so good at this particular Friday. You can wait for a laptop. You cannot wait the same way for milk. The people using AI to chase a deal are not foolish. They are doing what the tariff headlines trained them to do: assume the price might jump, and move first.
If a shop wants me in the door, it has to offer a reason that a chatbot cannot tabulate — a fit, a sound, a person who knows the difference between two similar things. Otherwise the high street becomes a showroom for a purchase that happens later, at home, after the machine has picked a winner. I do not know if that is efficient or just lonely. I know $11.8 billion is a lot of winning, and the street still looked like an ordinary Saturday.