Every year retailers design the Black Friday Sale to be the most awaited shopping extravaganza that Americans love. With huge discounts, they have been luring customers to line up in front of their stores for years now. Fighting extreme weather conditions, pushing their expenses towards end of the year, planning for Christmas, customers have been equally supportive in this extravaganza. Gradually, the lineups were dealt by opening stores one night early, hiring more temp staff and opening more payment counters. Even though the satisfaction of savings was huge among customers, the inconvenience was a big problem. I remember my Black Friday Sale experience in 2012. I left my house on Thursday evening at 10 pm to be among the early shoppers. But I was shocked to see Bellevue Square Mall parking which was full by that time. After 15 minutes of struggle finding a parking spot, my next struggle was to enter the mall which was fully packed. With Nordstrom, JC Penney, Macy’s, Sephora and other big brands present in one place, I should have expected this. I did not foresee any relief in future too. But last year, I was shocked to find a parking spot at 11 pm and a not so busy mall. Was it the sale that wasn’t attractive or were the shoppers not looking to save anymore? Later, I read in news and heard from many friends that Macy’s and many other big retailers had taken the experience online. But the crowd that went online was more than the retailers had expected and as a result sites kept on crashing. Later many ended up missing the purchase that they could have done in brick and mortar stores. Researchers and analysts broke down this decline as effects of economy, high customers spending year long. What they missed here was the fact that willingness to buy had not reduced, it was the lack of opportunity to buy. Also how can we forget Target’s credit card information compromise had gotten us all worried about the potential loss. This affected the sense of security that customers have while shopping. It took them some time but the trust has been re-established.
This year was better. As per Reuters, ” Shoppers in the United States spent $822 million online between midnight and 11 am ET, a 15-percent increase from 2014 but lower than the expected growth of 19 percent, according to the Adobe Digital Index, which tracked 180 million visits to over 4,500 U.S. retail sites. On Thanksgiving Day, online sales rose 22 percent from midnight to 5 pm ET.” Time Magazine’s article shows a gradual shift in shopping preferences of consumers. It mentions “Brick and mortar sales on Black Friday fell from $11.6 billion in 2014 to $10.4 billion in 2015, according to the retail researcher ShopperTrak. Sales on Thanksgiving fell from just over $2 billion to $1.8 billion. Both decreases are attributed to the increase in online sales, the Associated Press reports.”. These are clear indicators of what our shoppers want.
So, its time that marketers realise that they need to allocate more money to online and digital advertising in their budget rather than spending thousands and millions on pamphlets or newspaper inerts that go completely ignored. Give the shoppers a seamless experience. They must feel good about their decision to stay home and shop.