Black Friday vs. Green Friday: A Comparative Sentiment Analysis of Spanish Social Media Users’ Perceptions

The main objective of this study was to assess the marketing practices of companies related to Black Friday and Green Friday 2022 events in the Spanish market. This assessment was approached from the perspective of consumers by using the method of sentiment analysis of Spanish users who interact with companies through Facebook, Twitter and Instagram social network accounts. The study sample is made up of 8 companies, with a total of 4,342 comments received between November 2 and December 4, 2022. Data was collected with the data miner application exportcomments and sentiment analysis was performed at Atlas.ti based on pre-processed data. Based on content analysis, negative sentiments were clustered into 8 categories while positive sentiments were grouped into 5 main theme categories. Most of the sentiment analysis results indicated that companies that carried out the Black Friday promotional event approach showed data with highest negative consumer sentiment compared to companies that carried out Green Friday practices, which were mostly related to a more educational consumer approach to promotional events. This study emphasizes the critical and active attitude towards Black Friday discounts and the influence of consumers’ previous experiences with the brand and brand image, which affect consumer expectations on Green Friday or Black Friday approaches by companies.