Frenzied crowds seemed to be a thing of the past on Black Friday – the busy shopping day after Thanksgiving – and sales fell to $10.4 billion this year, down from $11.6 billion in 2014, according to preliminary figures from research firm ShopperTrak. Michele Dupré, group VP of retail, hospitality and distribution for Verizon Enterprise Solutions, said “consumers are likely saving their holiday shopping for the upcoming weekend, when we anticipate a healthy spike in activity”. It shows that shoppers are going to the stores. “I think what it clearly shows is that this isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon”.
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Iovation tracked online transactions at its clients over the Thanksgiving weekend and found mobile phones and tablets were used for between 46 and 48 percent of retail online transaction between Black Friday and Sunday before dropping to 39 percent on Cyber Monday.
“December’s really important”, he said.
That could mean that, even if foot traffic or web traffic is up at retailers, actual sales could disappoint on thin margins.
If you want some deals that are not expiring in a few hours, Amazon still has specials on its hardware, including the Fire HD 6 Kids Edition ($119.99, reg. price $149.99) and the Kindle Paperwhite Essentials Bundle ($159.97, reg. price $179.97). “Wal-Mart noted that 50 inch-55 inch 4K HDTVs were among the products that gained the most in popularity year over year and its rival said that it sold “two 48″ Samsung 4K Ultra HD TVs per minute”. “There’s so much overlapping, and it’s blurring the lines between one promotional event to the next”. Is it a “good deal”?
About 121 million shoppers were expected to be filling up online carts, according to research from the National Retail Federation, down from 126.9 million previous year.
That will increasingly be key in a noisy, omni-channel, omni-day retail world, she says.
Moovweb tracked 30 retailers in about eight different verticals. “It’s the one trend that I’ve seen that customers are responding well to”. Every year we hear about real-world retailers throwing everything they’ve got at Black Friday – the day after America’s Thanksgiving holiday – as the starting point for their annual Christmas shopping season.So what are the hot brands/products: televisions of course, which was the traditional means how retailers drove in the numbers into their stores offering them at a steal to upsell you on all their other brands.Black Friday. Site traffic and conversions were up six and and nine times, respectively, when compared to the typical daily average.
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“In a year over year comparison this year and last year, the retailers who closed their stores performed better than their leading competitors”, Pascal Cohen, digital insights manager for SimilarWeb told Geekwire.
