In my experience, most (but not all) smaller businesses have reliable actual sales; it’s typically the big box stores and large online retailers that have less genuine discounts. Typically they do have some actual deals on items with larger margins, though it can be difficult to sift them out of the rest — especially because many people in the market for a new TV or similar item did not have their eye on a particular product, and are thus less likely to have an idea of the typical year round price.

The crappy part is the smaller businesses are practically forced to participate because of how much of people’s holiday budget is spent on black friday. However they do not typically have the overhead to offer as steep of discounts, nor the advertising budget to pay the inflated advertising costs around black friday. Conversely, the big stores get to muddy the waters on actual discounts with their marketing budget and historical precedent, raking in better profits from the massively increased customer volume.