Happy Cyber Monday!
Many of us are facing a full week of work, coming off the long Thanksgiving weekend. We hope you had plenty of time to spend with family and friends!
While Black Friday marks the start of the holiday shopping season, Cyber Monday is the kick off to “multitasking while shopping” season. With Thanksgiving behind us, and December starting on Wednesday, today is the day we all get serious about our holiday shopping. For those of you with kids in school, the countdown is truly on as you realize they only have another three weeks of school until winter break. And my sincere apologies to those parents who hadn’t realized that until now…
On a side note, I never truly understood the lyric “And Mom and Dad can hardly wait for school to start again…” until I had kids.
Tom Fishburne, one of our favorites, unearthed a quote from a few years ago about what we are all facing today in our email inboxes:
“Today more than any other, every single marketer in possession of your email address has set their phasers to send…
Whether you’re partaking in deals this year or passing them by, take a moment to embrace the season’s true gift: all the emails you’ve been meaning to unsubscribe from, all in one place, all at the same time… stacked atop one another like desperate Jenga blocks.”
-Wired editor Brian Barnett
As we do every Monday, below are the top retail stories from last week. So, whether you need a break from online shopping or you are trying to avoid it at all costs. Take a few minutes to scan the stories below, chances are you probably missed a couple of headlines with the holiday last week.
Have a great Monday All!
Snapchat Adds New ‘Food Scan’ Capacity to Provide Recipe Matches for Food Items
Snapchat is adding another element to its ‘Scan’ feature with the addition of ‘Food Scan’ in partnership with Allrecipes, which will help Snap users find recipe recommendations by simply scanning in the ingredients that they have available at any given time.
*Kroger has been piloting a similar idea since Oct of last year with their “ChefBot” twitter AI bot, but we haven’t heard too much press about it since it launched. These are awesome ideas to make people’s lives easier, the first to truly figure it out, and make it simple to use will have a majorly useful and valuable app.
Amazon wins biggest share of Google results
Within the categories of Apparel (#1), Beauty (#1), and Furniture (#3) categories, Amazon is winning in organic search. Search activity is higher than before the pandemic as well. Searchmetrics, the firm behind the research, points to informational content, content for when customers are researching options, as an opportunity area to win against Amazon.
Walmart enlists Jason Derulo for first shoppable livestream on Twitter
Walmart is kicking off Cyber Week (11/28) with a shoppable livestream event featuring Jason Derulo. This will be beta testing Twitter’s shoppable livestream function, allowing customers to shop products straight from the platform.
“This will be the first time a brand in the US has leveraged this capability on Twitter and I’m excited to bring customers incredible deals on a platform they already love during the most joyful shopping season of the year,”
“Twitter is a platform where we consistently see high return across top-and middle-of-funnel content, so it’s a natural next step for us to explore this new functionality.”
– William White, Chief Marketing Officer, Walmart U.S.
Deloitte forecasts strong Black Friday sales
According to Deloitte’s “2021 Pre-Thanksgiving Pulse Survey (released yesterday), Black Friday will be back this year with in-store sales to regain lost ground during the Thanksgiving period, as pandemic concerns continue to wane.
According to the survey:
- 56% of consumers are planning to shop in-store (up from 41%)
- Online spending will be 60% of budgets, compared to 40% for in-store
- Consumer Spend average of $448, a 12% increase from last year and surpassing pre-pandemic levels.
- 56% percent of shoppers (versus 41% last year) plan to shop in-store as safety concerns are waning.
- The top reasons to shop in-store on Black Friday are:
- to take advantage of the best deals (70%)
- and to experience the excitement of the day (35%).
- As consumers continue to encounter higher prices, mass merchants (57%) and online retailers (54%) are the most preferred venues for shopping over the Thanksgiving period.
But Supply chain challenges and inflation continue to disrupt:
- 63% of holiday shoppers have already experienced stockouts,
- 54% are reporting higher prices, and
- 37% are reporting fewer discounts this season.
This has resulted in consumers shopping earlier, with 70% beginning their shopping season by the last week of October.
5 online shopping trends you can’t ignore
GWI (Global Web Index) shares their 5 trends “that you can’t ignore” that were caused by COVID but here to stay.
- Older consumers are coming of age online
- Online groceries are booming
- Younger consumers are driving social commerce
- More consumers are using more devices
- Older consumers have data privacy concern
RetailWit Take – We are aligned with all of these, but would say all consumers, not just older consumers, have a data privacy concern.
Holiday 2021: Meet the Hybrid Shopper
How will consumers behave during the holiday 2021 season? A new study from 84.51 reveals omnichannel shopping is here to stay as we adapt to the ‘next normal.
Six myths of holiday shopping 2021 busted
Ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday, NPD asked more than 1,000 U.S. consumers about their expectations for holiday shopping. Here is some of what it discovered:
- Think the economy is uncertain? Seven out of ten (70%) consumers spend the same or more than last year.
- Think consumers are avoiding shopping in stores? Only 9% said they are hesitant to shop in stores this year, 26% tell us they are looking forward to shopping in stores, and 82% will be splitting their shopping between physical stores and e-commerce.
- Think everybody started shopping early? Four out of 10 holiday shoppers (38%) haven’t started shopping yet.
- Think Black Friday is dead? Nearly one quarter (23%) planned to wait until Black Friday to start their holiday shopping, and 36% are looking forward to Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals.
- Think supply issues drove early holiday shopping? The top two reasons consumers shopped early, each cited by 42% of shoppers, were taking advantage of holiday deals and promotions and the desire to avoid the more hectic shopping days later in the season.
- Think tech products will be under most trees? Gift cards top the list of gifts consumers plan on buying, and apparel took the lead in gifts already purchased and items they are buying for themselves.
Target makes Thanksgiving Day store closing permanent.
Target is making a COVID practice (and really, pre-pandemic trend) permanent. With “Black Friday” turning from a day into weeks, pickup / delivery becoming more common, and the labor shortage, Target likely won’t be the last retailer to announce something like this.
Dollar Tree posts Q3 earnings and rolling out $1.25 price point.
Net sales up +3.9% ($6.42B), ID store sales up +1.6%, net income was $216.8M. With the release, they are adding the Dollar Tree Stores price point to $1.25 to all stores. The strategic decision behind it is to increase assortment, which is limited and especially so in the current inflation and supply chain constrained environment.
Best Buy posts Q3 2022 earnings beat; stock down.
Net sales were $11.9B (slight increase), Same-store sales +2%, revenue was $11.9B (vs 11.6B expected). They rose their yearly forecast slightly as a result. However, shares were down -12.3% with concerns over continued growth post-pandemic. Best Buy is moving forward with a loyalty program, additional advertising, and health care product / service expansion.
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