What consumers say they plan to buy is only part of the picture. As Black Friday 2026 approaches, new research across Latin America reveals a more complex relationship between purchase intention, financial priorities, trust, and actual shopping behavior.
Every year, Black Friday generates headlines about consumer enthusiasm, expected spending, and anticipated retail sales. Surveys measure how many people intend to shop, which categories attract the greatest interest, and how much consumers expect to spend.
These indicators are valuable. They help brands estimate potential demand, prepare marketing campaigns, and anticipate consumer needs.
But there is an important question that often receives less attention:
How much does purchase intention actually tell us about what consumers will do?
A shopper may express strong interest in purchasing a new smartphone but postpone the transaction when financing conditions change. Another may initially reject Black Friday promotions but make an unexpected purchase after discovering a genuinely attractive offer.
And a consumer who plans to buy on November 27 may complete the purchase two weeks earlier.
All three behaviors can exist within the same market, yet a conventional purchase-intention survey may struggle to distinguish them.
For research agencies, brands, and insights professionals working across Latin America, this creates an important challenge: understanding not only what consumers intend to do, but the circumstances that ultimately influence their decisions.
As Black Friday 2026 in Latin America approaches, the most valuable consumer insights may be found beyond the headline percentages.
1. The Numbers Reveal Interest, but Not Necessarily Commitment
Brazil offers an interesting example of how purchase-intention statistics can tell different stories.
According to the Fiserv Insights Black Friday 2026 survey, conducted with Opinion Box, 62% of surveyed Brazilian consumers intend to shop during Black Friday, compared with 78% in the corresponding 2025 study.
The research, based on 2,103 banked adults interviewed online across Brazil in September 2026, also found that 24% remained undecided about participating.
Meanwhile, a separate CNDL/SPC Brasil study, released on November 10, reported that 51% of surveyed consumers in Brazilian state capitals intended to shop, while 31% were still undecided.
At first glance, these figures may seem inconsistent.
However, the studies cover different respondent populations and use their own research designs. The results should not be interpreted as directly interchangeable estimates.
Instead, they illustrate a fundamental principle of market research:
A percentage becomes meaningful only when we understand who was interviewed, when the research took place, and how the question was asked.
A study targeting digitally active shoppers may produce a different picture from one including consumers with limited online purchasing experience. Research conducted several weeks before a promotional event may also capture different expectations from research conducted closer to the date.
This is particularly important when interpreting consumer trends across Latin America, where researchers must account for differences in income, digital access, purchasing habits, and local market conditions.
Purchase intention is a useful indicator of potential demand. It is not, by itself, a reliable prediction of completed transactions.
2. Consumers Are Not Necessarily Spending Less. They Are Becoming More Selective.
One of the most relevant findings from recent Black Friday research is the growing importance of financial decision-making.
In the Fiserv study, 29% of respondents expected to spend less than in previous years, while only 17% intended to spend more.
The CNDL/SPC Brasil study offered another revealing insight: among consumers planning to participate, 70% viewed Black Friday as an opportunity to purchase products they already needed at lower prices.
This distinction matters.
A consumer looking for a discounted appliance to replace a broken one behaves differently from someone browsing for an impulse purchase.
Both may answer “yes” when asked whether they intend to shop during Black Friday. Yet their motivations, flexibility, and likelihood of completing the purchase can be very different.
For brands and research teams, the challenge is to distinguish between different types of purchase intention.
Some consumers have already identified a product and are waiting for an acceptable price. Others are exploring opportunities without a specific purchase in mind. A third group may want to buy but remain constrained by available income, credit, or competing financial priorities.
These distinctions can significantly influence demand forecasts, pricing strategies, and marketing communications.
They also highlight the value of going beyond a simple yes-or-no survey question.
Instead of asking only whether a consumer intends to buy, researchers can explore what would make the purchase possible, what could prevent it, and which alternatives the consumer would consider.
The result is a more actionable understanding of consumer behavior in Latin America, especially during periods when household budgets and purchasing priorities influence spending decisions.
3. The Real Purchase Decision Happens Beyond the Discount
Black Friday marketing traditionally emphasizes discounts.
But consumers do not evaluate offers based on the advertised percentage alone.
They consider the total cost of purchasing, the reliability of the retailer, the availability of their preferred payment method, delivery conditions, and the perceived value of the product.
A 2026 study conducted by PainelTAP and Similarweb illustrates this distinction.
Among surveyed connected Brazilian adults considering Black Friday purchases, 56.4% identified the final price including shipping as a factor when choosing an offer, compared with 29.6% who cited the size of the advertised discount.
The findings come from an online, non-probability sample, but they offer a valuable direction for further research.
Consumers may respond to discounts, but the final decision depends on the complete purchasing experience.
Payment preferences create another layer of complexity.
In Brazil, Pix has become an important part of the digital payment experience, while installment options remain relevant for consumers managing larger purchases.
In Mexico, financing conditions play a particularly important role during major promotional periods. A 2026 EY study on El Buen Fin found that 52% of surveyed consumers planned to finance purchases through interest-free installments.
These findings should not be treated as directly comparable national estimates. Rather, they demonstrate why payment and affordability deserve attention in country-specific research designs.
For researchers, price sensitivity studies should therefore examine more than the nominal discount.
An offer can look attractive in a questionnaire but become less compelling once consumers consider delivery fees, financing conditions, payment accessibility, or concerns about the retailer.
Understanding these barriers can help explain the gap between reported interest and actual conversion.
4. Black Friday Is No Longer Just One Shopping Day
Another important development is the expansion of promotional activity beyond a single Friday.
In 2026, Black Friday falls on November 27. However, consumers across Latin America encounter multiple promotional events throughout the final quarter of the year.
In Brazil, marketplace campaigns associated with dates such as 9.9, 10.10, and 11.11 compete for consumer attention.
In Mexico, El Buen Fin runs from November 13 to 17, creating another major promotional opportunity before Black Friday itself.
This broader shopping calendar changes the way purchase intention should be interpreted.
According to the Mexican Association of Online Sales (AMVO), 67% of prospective consumers surveyed for El Buen Fin 2026 begin researching products more than a week before the event.
The same study found that 43% would purchase only if they identified a genuinely attractive opportunity.
These behaviors suggest that promotional shopping is increasingly a process of evaluation rather than a spontaneous decision triggered by a single event.
For researchers, this raises several important questions.
If a consumer buys a product during an early-November promotion, should that transaction be interpreted as additional demand, or as a purchase brought forward from Black Friday?
If a shopper waits until Cyber Monday, does that mean the original purchase intention was inaccurate?
And if a household postpones a purchase until December, was the intention lost or simply delayed?
A single pre-event survey cannot fully answer these questions.
Understanding the complete customer journey requires attention to the timing of decisions, the relationship between promotional events, and the difference between anticipated and realized behavior.
For market researchers, this is an opportunity to combine pre-event surveys, shopping diaries, digital behavioral indicators, and post-purchase interviews.
The goal is not merely to measure enthusiasm for Black Friday. It is to identify when and why that enthusiasm becomes a transaction.
5. Latin America Is Not One Consumer Market
International research teams often approach Latin America as a regional opportunity.
From a strategic perspective, this makes sense. Multicountry studies can provide valuable comparisons and help brands identify broader patterns.
However, Latin America is not a single consumer market, and even national averages can conceal meaningful differences.
The 2026 Fiserv study, for example, reported Black Friday purchase intention of 69% among surveyed consumers in Brazil’s North region, compared with 58% in the South.
This difference should not automatically be attributed to one particular economic or cultural factor. It does, however, suggest that national averages may not adequately describe the entire market.
Differences in product preferences, household priorities, payment behavior, and local shopping practices deserve closer investigation.
Mexico provides another example.
The AMVO study found that 62% of surveyed prospective El Buen Fin buyers planned to combine online and physical shopping channels.
This illustrates why a purely digital view of purchase intention may overlook important elements of the shopping journey.
Across countries such as Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, and Peru, researchers should examine how local conditions shape the relationship between interest and purchase.
The relevant factors may include income distribution, financing practices, logistics, retailer credibility, local promotional calendars, and consumer expectations.
For international agencies conducting cross-country market research in Latin America, the objective should not be to eliminate these differences in pursuit of a simplified regional average.
It should be to develop comparable research frameworks that preserve the context necessary to interpret local behavior accurately.
That requires more than translating a questionnaire.
It requires cultural understanding, appropriate sampling strategies, and fieldwork execution that reflects the realities of each market.
6. The Most Overlooked Consumers May Be Those Who Decide Not to Buy
Black Friday studies naturally focus on consumers who intend to make purchases.
But understanding non-buyers can be equally valuable.
Consider two consumers who both say they do not plan to participate.
One has no immediate need for a product. The other would like to buy but cannot justify the expense.
Their survey answers may be identical, but their underlying motivations are fundamentally different.
The first consumer may have little interest in promotional communications. The second may represent potential demand if the right conditions emerge.
Similarly, someone who abandons a shopping cart may be responding to unexpected shipping costs, limited financing options, concerns about product authenticity, or an inconvenient delivery window.
Without investigating the reason, abandoned purchases can easily be interpreted as a lack of interest.
This is where qualitative research becomes particularly valuable.
In-depth interviews, online communities, and follow-up conversations can uncover motivations and frustrations that structured purchase-intention questions may fail to capture.
For research agencies and brands, identifying why consumers do not buy can be just as actionable as understanding why others do.
It can reveal unmet needs, hidden barriers, and opportunities to improve the customer experience.
7. How Market Research Can Close the Gap Between Intention and Behavior
If purchase intention tells only part of the story, what should researchers measure instead?
The answer is not to abandon purchase-intention research. These studies remain useful for understanding awareness, consideration, and expected demand.
Instead, researchers should connect declared intentions with the conditions, motivations, and observed behaviors that determine purchasing outcomes.
Four approaches are particularly valuable:
1. Measure the strength and conditions of purchase intention.
Move beyond binary answers. Distinguish committed buyers from consumers who are still considering options, and explore the circumstances that could change their decisions. Price thresholds, available budget, preferred products, and financing requirements can provide important context.
2. Follow consumers throughout the shopping journey.
Whenever feasible, connect pre-event intentions with behavior during and after the promotional period. Longitudinal surveys, consumer diaries, and consent-based transaction information can help distinguish completed purchases, postponed decisions, product substitutions, and abandoned plans.
3. Segment and localize the research appropriately.
Analyze differences by country, region, income, category, purchasing channel, and relevant behavioral characteristics. Sampling decisions should account for potential coverage gaps, particularly when online-only studies may underrepresent consumers with limited digital access. Local questionnaire adaptation also helps ensure that concepts such as discounts, installments, and promotional timing are understood consistently.
4. Combine quantitative measurement with qualitative understanding.
Quantitative research helps identify the size and distribution of behavioral patterns. Qualitative interviews help explain the motivations behind them. When these approaches are supported by reliable fieldwork and consistent quality controls, researchers can develop more complete consumer insights.
These principles extend beyond Black Friday.
They are relevant to product launches, brand tracking, pricing studies, customer experience research, and other projects in which declared preferences may differ from real-world behavior.
The broader lesson is simple:
Better research does not merely ask what consumers intend to do. It investigates what makes them act.
8. Turning Black Friday Consumer Insights into Better Business Decisions
For brands, Black Friday research should ultimately support decisions rather than simply describe consumer sentiment.
A high percentage of intended buyers may indicate an attractive market opportunity, but it does not necessarily establish how much demand a specific promotion will generate.
Likewise, declining purchase intention does not automatically mean that every category, region, or consumer segment will perform poorly.
More useful questions include:
Which consumers are most likely to change their minds? Which barriers prevent interested shoppers from completing purchases? Where are payment conditions more important than additional discounts? Which purchases are being accelerated rather than genuinely created by promotions?
And which consumer behaviors observed during Black Friday may continue influencing purchasing decisions in 2027?
These are the kinds of questions that transform consumer data into strategic intelligence.
For international research agencies, answering them requires both thoughtful research design and dependable execution.
A well-designed survey can still generate misleading conclusions if respondents are poorly recruited, questions are insufficiently localized, or fieldwork conditions introduce avoidable biases.
This makes data collection quality an essential part of the insight-generation process.
Reliable market research fieldwork in Latin America helps ensure that researchers are interpreting the experiences of the right consumers, within the appropriate market context.
Final Thoughts: The Real Insight Lies Between Intention and Action
Black Friday 2026 provides an opportunity to observe how consumers navigate promotional offers, financial priorities, and increasingly complex purchasing journeys.
The available research points toward a shopper who evaluates offers carefully and considers the broader conditions of a purchase.
But the most important lesson is methodological.
Purchase intention tells us what consumers believe they may do at a particular moment.
Actual behavior reveals what happens when those expectations encounter real prices, competing priorities, available payment options, and practical purchasing conditions.
The space between those two realities is where some of the most valuable consumer insights can be discovered.
For companies seeking to understand Latin American markets, the objective should not be simply to collect more purchase-intention data.
It should be to collect better evidence about the decisions behind consumer behavior.
Researching Consumer Behavior Across Latin America?
At OnTarget, we support international market research agencies, insights teams, and organizations conducting qualitative and quantitative studies throughout Latin America.
From local recruitment and online sampling to questionnaire translation, fieldwork coordination, moderation, and international project management, our team helps research partners navigate local market complexities while maintaining high standards of data quality.
Whether your next project focuses on consumer behavior, retail trends, purchase decisions, or customer experience, having the right local fieldwork partner can make a meaningful difference in the quality of the insights you deliver.
Because understanding what consumers say is important. Understanding why they act is what makes research valuable.
Connect with OnTarget to discuss your next LATAM research project.