Black Friday and Cyber Monday have come and gone, kicking off the 2007 holiday-shopping season...apparently in full force.
As you are probably aware, Black Friday is the term in the U.S. for retail shopping on the Friday after Thanksgiving, and Cyber Monday refers to online shopping on the Monday following Thanksgiving.
These have become milestone shopping days that retailers use as indicators for the health of the holiday-shopping season. While they are often referred to as the busiest or even biggest shopping days, they are quite often trumped by other days leading up to Christmas.
Retail, probably more than any other business, seems to live and breathe on year-over-year and comparable-day sales comparisons. Ask even the smallest retailer you know how they are doing, and without a blink they can probably quote how the day, week, and month are stacking up compared with a year ago.
While economic conditions, weather, and countless other variables can greatly impact sales, I have to imagine that most retailers would feel like a high school football team losing their homecoming game if sales fell even slightly below the previous year. Nothing seems to soften that blow.
What really struck me this year, though, was hearing reports of malls opening at midnight and other stores opening up earlier than ever before. I couldn't help but wonder: how sustainable is Black Friday sales growth?
The National Retail Federation reported that Black Friday weekend traffic was up 4.8 percent over last year, but average consumer spending was down 3.5 percent from last year. The NRF projects that holiday sales will rise 4 percent, though, so perhaps it will all be worth it when all the numbers add up after the season has come and gone.
But in the back of my mind, when I start thinking about extra staffing, overtime pay, holiday pay, and perhaps even lower gross margins or even losses on some of the door-buster specials, I wonder what the result of net sales is and whether it is really all worth it? How quickly will the point be reached when you can't open any earlier, drive any more store traffic, or offer enough hot deals to justify it all?
Enter Cyber Monday
Based on survey research from Shop.org, this fact isn't lost on retailers. While Black Friday won't be disappearing anytime soon, many retailers are looking to how they can further tap into the online market to drive sales. I'm sure their data includes retailers that are strictly online-based, but seeing how 72.2 percent of them planned special promotions for Cyber Monday, up from 42.7 percent from two years ago, online holiday sales look to have a pretty solid future.
And if those numbers don't indicate retailers' interest, perhaps the prime-time TV commercial I watched while writing this does. It was for a very well-known national electronics retailer with over 600 retail stores in the U.S. alone, yet the commercial focused solely on its Web site.
Perhaps the number that has online retailers already smiling this year though was from the Shop.org survey that revealed that 72 million Americans--11 million more than last year--planned to shop online this past Monday. Maybe next year more shoppers will measure the shopping season based on remaining online shipping days than store shopping days, and more retailers will start planning their holiday calendar around SEO.
Which would you choose during the holiday shopping season: a long line at the local Costco warehouse store or an average download wait of 115 seconds per page on Costco's e-commerce site?
During Black Friday and Cyber Monday, a third of the 30 Web sites that Keynote Competitive Research monitors during the holiday season showed a significant drop in speed. Online shoppers, despite using high-speed connections, faced up to 2 minutes to process their e-commerce transactions, compared with the 1- to 2-second blip most are accustomed to, according to Keynote, which released its report Tuesday.
Traditional brick-and-mortar retailers that recently beefed up their e-commerce site were the group largely affected with traffic slowdowns, according to the report. And the research firm noted that product searches and check-out transactions were the two areas on sites that were affected the most with sluggish performance.
In Costco's case, for example, its site slowed by as much as 500 percent between 7 a.m. PT and 1 p.m. on Cyber Monday to log on, add items to a shopping cart, and check out, according to the report.
Toys "R" Us suffered as much as a 300 percent slowdown in downloading pages between 10 a.m. PT and 2 p.m. on Cyber Monday, translating to an average wait of 30 seconds to 60 seconds per page. J.Crew experienced a similar slowdown, with the average wait increasing more than 400 percent, according to Keynote. Black Friday and Cyber Monday typically result in a 5 percent to 10 percent increase in site sluggishness, Keynote said.
As you debate the merits of venturing out to hit the local retail stores this holiday season, verses spending a little more time processing transactions online, consider this: which situation affords you more time to eat another Christmas cookie and drink more eggnog?
Lots of kids expect to score video game gifts this holiday season, but they also expect to be highly disappointed by said gifts, according to a new nationwide survey.
(Credit:
Game Crazy)
While 80 percent of 8- to 17-year-olds polled by video game specialty retailer Game Crazy say they'll ask for a video game for the holidays, 60 percent anticipate getting a game they don't want, getting a game for the wrong system, or not getting any or all of the games on their holiday wish list. It's tough being a misunderstood young game aficionado in today's title- and console-laden world.
The kids' downtrodden expectations come from experience. According to the survey, nearly half of all those polled (49 percent) said they were let down by a video game-related gift they received last year.
Game Crazy, of course, is ready to help out. It has produced a parents' guide to video game buying (PDF) that walks uneducated moms and dads through game genres and types of game systems. It also has created a video game wish list that kids can complete online and e-mail to parents, grandparents, patrons, Secret Santas, or Hanukkah Harrys. The list also indicates each video game's rating.
For its 2007 Holiday Gift Tracker survey, Game Crazy polled 1,000 male and female participants online. Breaking down the meta disappointment, the poll finds that:
• 45 percent of those surveyed expect to get a game from their parents that they simply don't want.
Whatever you do, Mom and Dad, don't get them this game.
(Credit: Atari )• 75 percent of kids think they won't get all of the games on their holiday list; 33 percent think they won't get any.
• 62 percent of kids will ask for at least one video game they know has an ESRB rating over their age level; 58 percent think they will get a game rated above their age level.
• If it meant getting their favorite game, 29 percent of kids would agree to the not-always-fun task of teaching their brother or sister how to play it; 28 percent would agree to listen to their parents' favorite radio station in the car. Get ready for lots of Celine Dion, youngsters.
The good news? If kids go into the holidays with such truly dreary hopes, they'll just be happy you didn't get them 1982's ET: The Extra Terrestrial for the original Atari.
It's happening again.
If you thought one minute past midnight the day after Thanksgiving was too early to choke out your fellow shoppers in the name of a great deal, you were wrong.
An Acer laptop will be one of the featured items offered at Black Friday-like prices Friday, November 2, in its stores.
(Credit: Wal-Mart)Following last year's decision to offer a $398 laptop several weeks ahead of the traditional Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving), Wal-Mart is planning on slashing prices on five items--in its stores, not online--beginning at 8 a.m. this Friday. One of them will be a $348 Acer laptop with 1GB of RAM. The other four items and their prices will be kept secret until Friday morning when the sale officially begins. At that time, the prices will be available on the Wal-Mart Web site. The retailer will still hold a traditional Black Friday sale.
The secretive nature of revealing the pricing online at the very last second is likely an attempt to avoid what has become ritual among retailers and Black Friday fans. More and more, Black Friday Web sites have made it their business to reveal retailers' circular ads before they are officially published.
It's caused some retailers, like Wal-Mart, to threaten legal action. Earlier this month, Wal-Mart sent notices to 10 Web sites that the retailer says it will sue if the ads are published before November 19, the official release date.
But will the strategy of starting the holidays earlier and earlier bring more change to Wal-Mart's coffers? In past years, the evidence of success has been "mixed," according to consumer retail analysts. In general the lower-priced items do well, but products with higher price tags, generally over $500, are still a tougher sell.
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