Monthly Archives: November 2016

Holiday Sales

This blog is based on Yolinda Jin’s blog “Thanksgiving or Black Thursday”

https://blogs.ubc.ca/yolindajin/2016/10/16/thanksgiving-or-black-thursday/

Thanksgiving just past and Christmas is coming. Promotions and advertisements in shopping malls changed from “Thanksgiving sales” into “Christmas discount”. It seems that whenever holidays come, holiday sales come together. Retailers usually use holiday sales to entice buyers into spending more so as to achieve their goals. Therefore, holiday marketing plays and important role in retailers’ sales strategy.

Sales in traditional holidays

“Retailers offer significant sales on the day of Black Friday, assimilating the specific shopping events and merging them into a series of materialistic paradise.”

This is what Yolinda Jin said in her blog and this is indeed the actual phenomenon in every holiday season. Retailers usually plan for the holiday sales several months before, design some special holiday offers and discounts to entice buyers into spending more. Sometimes they may not aim to increase revenue dramatically but just to increase sales volume to achieve annual sales goals or clear out inventories, especially for holidays in the end of the year like Thanksgiving and Christmas. What I agree with Yolinda is that, these sales attract people from family events. We are supposed to spend time with families in these traditional holidays, however, we pay more attention to shopping now. It is time to see the problems and realize that sales are not the core, but families and traditions are.

Shoppers vie for copies of video games at a Black Friday sale at a Wal-Mart Stores Inc. store in Mentor, Ohio, U.S., on Thursday, Nov. 24, 2011. Retailers are pouring on the discounts to attract consumers grappling with 9 percent unemployment and a slower U.S. economic expansion than previously estimated. Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images

(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/12/walmart-black-friday-2014-thanksgiving_n_6140442.html)

Festivals that retailers create

The description of crazy consumption in Yolinda’s blog reminds of a shopping festival in China, called Double 11 Shopping Carnival, which is an e-commerce holiday sales created in 2009. On the 11th of November, the majority products are at discounts. It has become more and more popular these years and hit the record of sales revenue every year. In this year, the carnival just past two days before. One of the biggest e-commerce T-mall achieves 120.7 billion RMB ($17.73B) sales in two days. It is an astonishing number for sales and a great victory in the battle of holiday sales. However, to see it from consumers’ view, are these consumptions necessarily in need? Or we purchased just because we are overwhelmed by the atmosphere that retailers created?

china-singles-day

To summarize, holiday sales is an important part of businesses’ strategies. The success in holiday season may increase the market share and boost their annual sales. For retailers, they should take the opportunity. For consumers, they should have rational consumptions and pay more attention to the holiday itself when they enjoy the sales.

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Reference:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/china-alibaba-singles-day-1.3847390