Amazon reveals start date for two-week Black Friday sales event

Realising consumers presented with a sale will keep spending until their credit cards melt, Amazon is to run its 2016 Black Friday event for 12 whole days.

The online retailer will begin the sales extravaganza on 14 November and keep offering discounts for almost two full weeks, culminating in Black Friday itself on 25 November. It is then likely that these sales will spread across the following weekend and spill over into Cyber Monday on the 28 November.

On Black Friday 2015, Amazon sold more than 7.4 million items in the UK alone, a company record which translates into an average of 86 items sold every second. This year's two-week event will be called the Black Friday Sale.

Although often associated with technology items like televisions and smartphones, Amazon's Black Friday deals also stretch across other categories, including homeware, toys and garden furniture. In all, Amazon will offer twice as many discounts as in 2015.

Some 20,000 temporary staff have been hired by Amazon UK to help its sales efforts in November and December. Amazon's Black Friday period will include deals on products sold by over 1,000 small businesses.

Aside from websites falling offline briefly due to increased traffic, Black Friday has mostly been a success for online retailers since the event took off in the UK in 2013. But 2014 was a different story for physical shops, with some supermarkets being forced to close early and call the police after shoppers fought over discounted televisions.

Mass brawls in branches of Asda prompted the supermarket to shift all Black Friday deals to its website for 2015. Tesco was also criticised in 2014 for starting its sale at midnight; the same year saw its website crash at midnight and remain offline for many hours, unable to cope with unprecedented demand. In 2015 came more robust websites and Tesco did not start its in-store sales until 5am.

"Black Friday is no longer about a single day," said Patrick Munden, head of marketing and communications at Salmon, an e-commerce consultancy. "[It is now] closer to a week-long event; Amazon's plans to spread its sales over two weeks demonstrates that they are savvy to that fact and the opportunity it presents."

Doug Gurr, UK manager for Amazon, said: "In response to positive customer feedback for Black Friday deals, we are introducing the Black Friday Sale – 12 days of fantastic deals on must-have gifts and products, saving our customers millions of pounds."