大象传媒

From聽the Telegraph

1. Make a plan of action

Doing Black Friday blind is a rookie error. A survey by the predictive analytics firm Blue Yonder found that people's strategies include going to the shops in advance to work out where the product is located on the shelves, working in a team to hunt down the items and getting there as early as possible to queue.

2. Do your shopping in Cardiff

Cardiff could well be the best-mannered place to do your Black Friday shopping. A survey by Watchshop.com found that 77pc of people in the Welsh capital would never insult a member of staff and 72pc of its shoppers would never push into a queue.

3. Get a doctor's note

Conlumino, the retail research agency, found that 8pc of consumers are planning to take a day off work to go shopping on Black Friday. Considering that there are 31.2m people in work, according to the most recent employment figures from the ONS, that means employers could be looking at 2.5m empty desks

4. Take a book (and a helmet)

Customers were trampled last year when large retailers such as Asda opened in the morning, allowing shoppers who had been queuing all night to pour through the doors.

5. Forget the stores, go virtual

Or you could just skip the queues altogether and shop online - it's all the rage these days.

6. Avoid the internet crowds

However, the traffic surge meant that major retailers' websites - including John Lewis, Tesco, Currys, PC World, Argos, GAME and Boots - started going down from around 7am last year.

7. Charge your phone

So you can send Snapchats of all your purchases to everyone you know.

But also because mobile shopping accounted for 26pc of all online transactions on Black Friday last year, and PCA Predict expects that to jump to 33pc this year.

8. Give yourself a budget

Conlumino also found that 9pc of consumers fear they will spend more than they can afford on Black Friday this year

9. Check it's actually a deal

Lovethesales.com crunched some numbers and found that between 10pc and 15pc of retailers' stock is actually on sale at any given time during the year.

"In reality, most retailers are on sale all the time - they just decide not to advertise it

10. Beware, play fair

Andrew Yule, employment partner at the law firm Winckworth Sherwood, warns customers to be wary of "bogus websites and online scams". Using a credit card is a good way of protecting yourself against fraud.