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1. Data has started flowing in for the Black Friday to Cyber Monday sales event (the “Cyber 5” or “Turkey 5”). I wrote a recap of Black Friday on Amazon AMZN earlier this week, positing that Friday’s event was underwhelming compared with prior years.
2. And indeed recent analysis from Adobe Analytics found that sales were down on a year-on-year basis for both Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Amazon said in a blog post today that it was a ‘record-breaking Black Friday and Cyber Monday’ for the company, but didn’t specify exactly what kind of record was broken.
3. Across a cohort of 100 clients at my company Bobsled Marketing, we found that sales volume did grow over the holiday, just not as quickly as they did last year. Sales over the 5-day period were up 43% compared with the prior year (2020). This is compared with a sales increase of 109% last year (2020 compared with 2019). While the results were muted, there are still lessons to be learned from the event. Here are the trends on my radar from these early results.
What are the major sales events in Japan, is there a speciffic sales season, time or industry speciffic sales etc. ? Have you ever bought something during one of these sales?
Brands started promoting deals earlier
4. Many brands set up their discounts earlier than usual this year. Among our clients at Bobsled Marketing, many initiated deals starting early in the Thanksgiving week. Some of those opted for a step-up promotional plan, where discounts started small but increased over the holiday event. This had the benefit of capturing early shoppers who didn’t want to take the chance that stock would run out, but also capturing shoppers who were motivated by higher discounts.
5. At the same time, the brands were not leading with their best possible deal, preserving profit margins. The Cyber 5 holiday, along with other shopping events like Prime Day, also carry a challenge in that a lot of “window shopping” occurs in the days leading up to the event. As a result, we generally see higher advertising impressions, but lower actual sales and return on ad spend. Brands that run promotions or discounts during that ‘window shopping’ period might actually be able to bring those purchases forward and capture market share.
Discounts were smaller
6. Anecdotally, shoppers seem disappointed in the depth of discounting this year. Amazon’s language in its own press release was curious – instead of discussing the discount amount, the leading line was about how some products on Amazon were discounted more deeply than other retailers: “On Black Friday alone, Amazon offered customers products with incredible savings compared to other retailers”
Let’s imagine you had a small business selling jewellery, would you also discount your items heavily for Black Friday etc.? (Let’s discuss the pros and cons of putting items on sale from the merchants perspective)
7. According to a recent study from ecommerce analytics firm Profitero, Amazon had the lowest prices by an average of 14% compared to all other major retailers. This distracts from the fact that discounts across the retail ecosystem were perhaps smaller overall.
Do you think that Black Friday is helpful for the economy ?
Do you think black Friday is being ruined by retailers trying to get ahead of each other in releasing Black Friday deals?
Is Black Friday is pure consumerism?
Phonetic Chart
