With just two days until US Black Friday kicks off, we have pre-Black Friday predictions and a final pre-holiday news roundup. Statista charts the impressive historic growth of Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber-Monday sales. Despite optimism, Deloitte and other experts predict only modest sales growth due to pre-holiday promotions, consumer wearout and online impact.
Google Search shares four trends in advance of Black Friday sales including: 76% use mobile as a “door-to-the-store”; women shop early, men wait; biggest foot traffic is between noon and 4 PM; New Englanders are the biggest mobile deal searchers. Adobe Digital Insights says Black Friday sales will surpass $3 billion, up 9.4%.
Forbes offers five predictions including: 81% of consumers say the US election didn’t change their shopping plans; retailers are upping their in-store game; traditional Black Friday is dead; social shopping will be busy; and 29% of consumers have already done their shopping. According to re/Code, technology and a series of virtual sales during the year have made Black Friday irrelevant. The Consumer Report Holiday Poll says 27% of Americans will shop in-store on Black Friday, down from 31% last year.
Apple is back with an online Black Friday sale after dropping out last year. Patagonia will donate 100% of its global Black Friday sales to “grassroots environmental groups”, which could total more than $2 million. Before you click to buy on Amazon, Business Insider suggests you check prices on two other sites: Camelcamelcamel and Fakespot. Coupons.com highlights best retail deals, including Levi’s, OshKosh B’Gosh and Banana Republic. A former Best Buy retail sales and customer service clerk, with five years of Black Friday experience, shares an insider look at the shopping madness.
Saddle up and get ready for Friday sales and shopping or just sit back and buy online and avoid the crowds like many consumers will this year.
Thanksgiving E-Commerce Spending in Perspective
The Thanksgiving weekend keeps getting bigger and bigger for U.S. shoppers and retailers alike. According to comScore, Cyber Monday saw about $355 million in e-commerce sales in 2008. Since then, the online shopping splurge has skyrocketed with sales from desktop users hitting $2.28 billion last year.
Black Friday and Thanksgiving itself have also experienced impressive growth in e-commerce sales since 2008, reaching $1.66 and $1.1 billion in 2015 respectively. While this is considerably less than what consumers spend online on Cyber Monday, it still outstrips e-commerce sales on an average day by a healthy margin. Via statista.com
The five-day holiday e-commerce outlook: Online sales will grow, but experts are split on how much
Web sales on Thanksgiving will grow the fastest, but Cyber Monday still wins.
With the Thanksgiving shopping weekend dawning, analysts are split on just how lucrative it’s going to be.
Rod Sides, head of the retail practice at Deloitte LLP, tells Internet Retailer that online sales for the five days between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday will increase 15-17% year over year, with half of shoppers’ holiday shopping budgets during the period allocated to e-commerce—a first. That’s thanks in part to retailers priming shoppers for deals, he says. “What’s so interesting to me is the number of Black Friday promotions that hit early,” Sides says. “We’ve seen it turn it into a cyber week.”
In fact, retailers have been hyping “Black Friday deals” for weeks. In the 30-day period that ended Nov. 14, there were 13% more Black Friday-themed emails than there were during the same period a year earlier, based on an analysis of the email activities of 50,000 brands, according to eDataSource. Via internetretailer.com
4 Predictions From Google About Black Friday Shopping This Year
Ahead of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Google analyzed recent search data to look at shopping trends and top products for 2016. The top trending brands so far this season include Hatchimals, Nintendo, DJI drones, Pokemon and Trolls.
According to Google’s Think With Google team, 76 percent of people who search for nearby products on their smartphones visit a brick-and-mortar businesses within a day. The search giant also has some good news for online shoppers: According to The Wall Street Journal, Google is showing lower prices for some Amazon products than Amazon itself.
Google has added a number of new tools for retailers since last year, including a way to tell how far away people are from stores when they search, which in turn lets retailers know if they’re worth targeting with ads and set higher bids on ad buys with specialized promotions. Retailers can also now see which areas drive the most ad clicks.
Here’s a look at four trends Google is seeing so far for this holiday season. Via adweek.com
2016 Black Friday, Cyber Monday Holiday Insights And Predictions
The holidays (and holiday shopping) are rapidly approaching. Black Friday is less than a week away, followed by Cyber Monday just three days after that. Thus begins the month-long sprint to Christmas and Hanukkah. Here are this year’s holiday stats and facts that are impacting the shopping experience. Even if you’re not in the retail world, you may still find some of this information relevant, or at least interesting.
Adobe Digital Insights shared its 2016 holiday predictions. It looks like 2016 will be a good year:
• Black Friday will be bigger than ever. For the first time, sales are expected to exceed $3 billion, an 11.5% increase over last year.
• Cyber Monday’s sales will exceed $3 billion, an increase of 9.4% over last year.
• 5% of customers will drive 35% of the revenue.
• 25% of the top products sold this holiday season will be during Black Friday weekend. Via forbes.com
Five Predictions Counting Down to Black Friday
The craziest time of year for retailers—Black Friday through Cyber Monday—is 72 hours away. Leading economic indicators like low unemployment rates and positive wage growth are all pointing to a more confident consumer, which bodes well for retailers during this all-important holiday season.
In early October, PwC predicted that consumer spending would increase 10 percent during the holidays compared to last year, which would mark the highest level of consumer spending since the Great Recession. And we continue to believe that will hold true, and the majority of growth to be driven through digital channels.
Yet, as we embark on this critical weekend for retailers and consumers alike, here are five things that will impact the shopping experience… Via forbes.com
Black Friday isn’t dead. It’s just irrelevant.
Last year — and for many years now, really — the conversation around Black Friday has focused on the psychological effects of deep “savings” … and why consumers fall for the smoke and mirrors. Big brands have built pricing structures that are artificially high, allowing for massive discounts that appear to be “bargains.” This misrepresentation to the customer meant a lot of potential revenue in the middle of critical earnings weeks.
As consumers become increasingly informed and connected, we’re now all fairly aware of the Black Friday song and dance. An impetus for consumers to spend? Something that is timely and special, and yet accessible, rather than discounted and leftover.
But there’s something else happening. In this moment of profound innovation on the back of e-commerce and technology, new and old brands are working hard to gain our business. In doing so, they have created a virtual “series” of “Black Fridays” throughout the season. These are cause-driven moments or limited-edition collections that add value in a way more relevant to today’s informed consumer; it’s not about false discounts. Via recode.net
Black Friday 2016: Shopping in Stores v. Shopping Online
For many Americans, Black Friday represents an opportunity to score unbeatable bargains. It has also become a tradition, as much a part of the holiday season as watching “It’s A Wonderful Life.” Whether motivated by doorbusters or time-honored observance, 44 percent of American adults—an estimated 76 million people—will shop in stores or online this Friday, according to the second Consumer Report Holiday Poll of 2016.
Over the years, Black Friday has slowly lost its luster as a seminal sales event. The decline started when the holiday shopping season began to expand, a phenomenon referred to as “Christmas creep.” Many merchants have been providing holiday discounts earlier in the cycle—think of Amazon’s Christmas in July promotion—so consumers need not wait until the day, or weekend, after Thanksgiving for bargains. The steady surge in online shopping, with its nonstop barrage of deals and discounts, has further eroded the Black Friday mystique. Credit more generous price-matching policies, too. In fact, more than half of consumers surveyed recently by the consultancy Deloitte said that they don’t rely on Black Friday as much as they used to.
Among those surveyed by Consumer Reports, 27 percent said they plan to shop at brick-and-mortar stores on Black Friday, down from 31 percent last year. Another 27 percent said they plan to shop online, up from 24 percent last year. As a group, millennials are the most enthusiastic: 59 percent said they plan to be part of the madness. By contrast only 38 percent of baby boomers expect to participate. Via time.com
Apple announced a one-day shopping event
Apple announced a one-day shopping event this Friday via a new section on its website, rejoining the Black Friday tradition it dropped last year.
The Cupertino, California, company appears to be focusing its Black Friday efforts on e-commerce this year. The dedicated webpage says the fastest way to shop the event will be with the Apple Store app, and there will be free two-day delivery on almost everything on the day. Apple will also open some retail stores earlier on Black Friday, November 25. Via businessinsider.com
Black Friday 2016: Patagonia to Donate Sales to Charity
To embrace the holiday spirit, the outdoor clothing retailer Patagonia is donating 100% of its global Black Friday sales to charity.
Patagonia CEO Rose Marcarioa explained in a company blog post that the retailer would give the money to grassroots environmental groups that are “working in local communities to protect our air, water and soil for future generations.” “These are small groups, often underfunded and under the radar, who work on the front lines,” she wrote. “The support we can give is more important now than ever.”
Donations will include sales made from both the retailer’s website and global stores and are estimated to raise over $2 million, Corley Kenna, the global director and communications and public relations at Patagonia, told Fortune in an email. This is the first time the company has ever done something like this, according to Kenna. Via fortune.com
The 2 sites you should use before buying on Amazon
It’s the holiday season, which means it’s time for retailers to bombard you with sales, special offers, and other attempts to sell you things.
For many people, the Black Friday-to-Christmas shopping rush will lead to Amazon. It makes sense: The e-commerce giant sells a lot of products and makes it very easy to buy them. Many times, those products are less expensive than they are elsewhere.
But not always. Though most people seem to be satisfied with the Amazon shopping experience, certain aspects of it can still be misleading. Thankfully, there are tools you can and should use to counteract them. Let’s talk about two: Camelcamelcamel and Fakespot. Via businessinsider.com
What it’s really like to work retail on Black Friday
As Time reports, newspapers in the 1960s reappropriated the term Black Friday — which was originally used to describe the September 24, 1864, stock market crash and panic it caused — to describe the rush of crowds stores saw the day after Thanksgiving.
These days, to call it the most hectic day in retail is an understatement.
To get a better sense for what it’s really like to work retail on Black Friday, we asked a former Best Buy sales associate who handled customer service and worked as a cashier during five Black Fridays until 2013 to weigh in. Here’s what she had to say about her experience Via businessinsider.com
Coupons.com Has Done Your Black Friday 2016 Footwork–Here’s Where To Save Huge
Black Friday gets a lot of hype as offering crazy-good deals, and that positive vibe isn’t all unfounded. Many retailers honestly do use this day to give you their best deals of the entire year. The obvious catch? You have to know about those deals to take advantage of them. And that’s where Coupons.com can be an enormous help. The Internet deal-hawk company has compiled some great data to help you get more for your money.
The Can’t Miss Deals
A few of your favorite stores, such as Levi’s, OshKosh B’Gosh and Banana Republic, are offering significant discounts (typically 30% to 50%) off just about anything you buy in store, although you might have to spend a certain amount for the discount to qualify. Some, like Perris Ellis, are sweetening that deal by adding free shipping.
For the home, three of the best options are Horchow (40% off home decorating sale), AJ Madison (up to 60% off top brands) and Home Depot (40% off major appliances). You’ll also want to check out Overstock.com, where you can expect savings of at least 10% on orders and get shipping for free. Via forbes.com
Enjoy Thanksgiving with family and friends
That’s a wrap for Black Friday predictions. Hoping your retail and e-commerce sales exceed your expectations. From all of us at Cashback Industry News, we wish our US readers, retailers and e-commerce colleagues an enjoyable Thanksgiving on Thursday with family and friends. We won’t be publishing on Black Friday but our Monday issue will report early sales results across the US.