[Re: External Blog Post]

“People tend to make more impulse and inspired purchases in person, especially if they’ve been made to feel like a first-class shopper.” – Kit Yarrow [1]

The way to encourage people to feel that Christmas is just around the corner is to make them known that they can receive presents. And they’ll give presents. When the Christmas shopping season begins? On the Black Friday. A non-holiday-that-tastes-of-holiday which I ignored two days ago. Then you see the advertisement in every single website. And it smells of marketing.

In his blog Mark J. Miller starts talking about coffee retailers’ promotion and ends up saying:

“The Black Friday is the best day of the year for wannabe social scientists in the marketing world to try out their craziest ideas.”

The Black Friday is a game played  in a short time full of pressure. As a retailer your purpose is to increase the excitement in a day full of excitement that open a so exciting shopping period. That will reflect on your sales. And your excitement will goes up. In a bunch of aggressive competitors, as a retailer the game is played the days before the Black Friday. The customers have to choose you.

All of this it is challenging for the sales promotion. You have to attract early birds shoppers who probably have an idea about the good they wanna purchase, but if they miss their goal, they won’t think too much and buy the best opportunity they see in a storm of opportunities. Hence, your sales promotion must highlight that You have lots of offers that cannot be renounced. If customers feel they are less likely to leave empty handed, they’ll choose you. If they feel an immediate value, they’ll enter your store. But creating this immediate value to add to the everyday value you give requires something more than your everyday sales promotion.

As Miller writes, the social media offer great tools and companies play the game by combining the online cyber opportunities with a greater attention to the overall service to improve the customers’ experience and with traditional forms of sales promotion like samples and coupons. But retailers have to reinvent these forms to make them special for a special day, because they need to be first, distinguished and chosen. Thus, be crazy and creative. Dare! If you fail, your sales won’t increase, but probably the customers will forget your mistake. It’s one day. If you succeed, the attempt will become ‘perceived value’. It will be one month of Christmas shopping.

Bibliography:

[1] Mark J. Miller, ‘Free Coffee Not the Only Perk Awaiting Black Friday Shoppers’. Retrieved from http://www.brandchannel.com/home/post/2012/11/20/Black-Friday-Free-Coffee-111912.aspx

[2] Retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2012/11/20/black-friday-thanksgiving-target/1718049/

[3] Retrieved from http://www.i4u.com/48312/walmart-black-friday-2011-sales-launches-already-10pm-thanksgiving-night