‘Tis the season and all that, so I thought
as a non-US native, I should take a look at the stats for Black Friday and its
close relative, Cyber Monday. As you’ll all know, Black Friday is the busy
shopping day that follows Thanksgiving in the US. What you may not know if that
it has now become a global phenomenon (or epidemic, depending on your
viewpoint), with the UK, Europe and further afield all now joining in the
commercial frenzy. Cyber Monday may be an add-on, but the increase in online spend
and focus shows how hotly contested the battle between ‘main street’ and online
retail has become.
So what is the fuss all about?
Well, according to the pundits, shoppers in
2012 spent on average $423 each over the Thanksgiving weekend, up from $398 in
2011, and 41% of it was online - topping $1 billion for the first time
in 20120, according to comScore. But
while bricks and mortar sales were up only 3% year on year, online sales rose
by and average of 15% (according to MarketingLand) or for the largest US online
retail brands by up to 30% (according to data compiled IMB Corp’s Smarter
Commerce arm). What’s more, sales made
on a mobile device increased by 15%.
However, while online sales are expected to
continue to rise, some wonder whether the growing windows for online discounts,
with some merchants launching online offers as early as Thanksgiving in order
to compete with bricks and mortar sales, will diffuse the growth. For example,
Amazon and Target both run week-long cyber deals that run over the weekend.
I guess we'll have to wait to see this year's figures, but my money is on Cyber Monday soon stealing a march on a gloomy Black Friday.
For a distillation of the weekend’s key
stats, MarketingLand.com had the best infographic I could find – take
a look.
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