Many Colors of Black Friday

Black Friday got its start decades ago as ingenious retailers looked for ways to win the business of American shoppers trying to stretch limited Christmas gift budgets.  Sale prices and special displays enticed consumers to spend early.   Shoppers started lining up outside stores on Friday morning waiting for the ‘key to turn in the latch’ and rush in to get the best bargains or win possession of the most coveted toys with limited inventory.  Those days are gone.  Black Friday has morphed to a mix of in-store and on-line shopping that extends from the late hours of Thanksgiving Day all the way through the week-end and into Monday.  In our modern world, the shades of Black Friday has changed, leaving a somewhat colorful four-day shopping frenzy.

The statistics on the day are illuminating.

·        Brick and mortar stores experienced 7.1% increase in sales in 2018, compared to the pre-holiday period, according to First Data Insights.

·        In 2018, 89 million of the 165 million American shoppers spent both online and in-store.  Dual channel shoppers outspent the single-channel shoppers by $93.00.

·        Black Friday ends with Cyber Monday.  According to Adobe Analytics $7.9 million was spent online in 2018, representing an increase of 19% over the prior year.

First hours of Black Friday shopping in 2019, saw shorter lines at doors and fairly thin crowds inside stores.  However, over $4.2 billion was spent on-line in those early hours according to Adobe Analytics.  The digital shopping monitor is predicting $7.4 billion in total on-line sales during the Black Friday week-end.

The National Retail Federation is predicting that the 165 million shoppers that were out last year will show up again in 2019.  However, where they are is more difficult to determine this year. Nearly half of the on-line spending on Thanksgiving Day was executed from smartphones, a 24% increase from last year.  Using the smartphone as the point of sale means shoppers may not be sitting at home in their pajamas.  They could instead be heading into the stores, seeing what they want and ordering it on-line for hassle free delivery.  That said, click-and-collect orders were up 65% in 2018 compared to 2017. 

As Black Friday changes, it seems that American retailers are challenged more than ever to creatively engage customers with both in-store and on-line channels.