As we were heading into Black Friday, I wondered if anyone in healthcare was doing something for Black Friday. It’s such a big shopping day, I had to think that someone was getting involved. Turns out, I found a few things.
The first thing I found was a Medical Uniform Boutique in Downtown Lancaster, PA. They were promoting 10% off scrubs:
Black Friday Sale at Just Scrubz in Downtown Lancaster, PA #Lancaster #nursesagainstviolence2018 #LPN #Lancaster #homehealthaide #LGH #healthcare #nurselife #NursePractitioner #nurse #CNA #scrubs #justscrubz717 pic.twitter.com/zCZsx1E4Af
— Justscrubz717 (@justscrubz717) November 13, 2018
This actually felt pretty reasonable. Scrubs is something that makes a lot of sense for medical professionals to buy on Black Friday. Of course, the JustScrubz account only had 1 follower, so I’m not sure that promotion did very well. I did just feature it in this post. So, your welcome citizens of Lancaster.
Next up, I found a health insurance company offering a Black Friday special:
Consumerism at its finest… Black Friday special for health care anyone? ?? pic.twitter.com/RxZLafJfdY
— Izzy (@iz_marcelletti) November 15, 2018
The tweet does seem to be advertising their online visits which could be a pretty valuable thing for people who might be traveling over Thanksgiving. It’s never fun to get sick while traveling, but always a pain to get care on the holidays. So, I’d say this online visit offer could be a pretty good one.
The next Black Friday deal I found for healthcare was from GE Healthcare Life Sciences. You can see the Black Friday landing page here. Looks like this is going to be a great place for you if you’re interested in Bioprocess, Genomics, Western Blotting & Imaging, Biacore chips and reagents, Purification: AKTA, columns and media, and Cell Culture. Sounds like some hot sellers to me. Who wouldn’t want to buy some genomics on Black Friday?
In case you’re interested in the GE Healthcare Life Sciences offer, they’ll be donating $10 to Seeding Labs for every purchase made during their Black Friday event. They have a goal of raising $10,000 which if my math is correct, that means they expect this Black Friday deal will be taken advantage of by at least 1000 people. Who knew that cell culture, genomics, and protein purification would be so popular on Black Friday.
I’ll admit that I’m not sure if I love or hate the use of Black Friday in healthcare. Certainly it’s a big shopping day and it makes sense for marketers to use it if they can effectively. No doubt we’ll see plenty of action from consumer health devices like 23 and Me and Fitbit. However, at some point the Black Friday tag doesn’t seem to fit.
I think my friend Grace Cordovano put it best:
1) The way people interacts with #healthcare, especially in midst of a diagnosis, isn't consumerism.
Consumers have:
?access to information
?price transparency
?perform transactions in positive, or at minimum, neutral state of being.#hcldr— Enlightening Results (@GraceCordovano) July 24, 2018
3) There are no sales in #healthcare. When’s the last time you saw a Family & Friends weekend at the pharmacy, buy one get one MRI for free, or a black Friday sale? #hcldr
— Enlightening Results (@GraceCordovano) July 24, 2018
I hope you’re enjoying your Black Friday and not spending too much money on Amazon. They get me every year.