For years I have been considering within a “retail” strategy how it could be possible that there would be sales after the Christmas period and that there would not be a specific sales period a month or a month and a half before Christmas.
I was surprised that a concept like Halloween had been imported but a concept like Black Friday had not yet penetrated a society like ours.
Et voilà, now it is a reality that each year far exceeds the previous one and where 2016 has been the definitive consolidation.
According to published data, the Amazon website in Spain has sold more than 940,000 products on Black Friday with a sale of more than 10 items per second. Becoming the day with the most sales in the history of the company in Spain.
Positive side effects are that El Corte Inglés has sold one more 30% on the first day of Black Friday compared to 2015. Receiving more than 3 million visits to its website.
Where does success lie for commerce?
In the temporal dilation of purchases, if we count from November 25 to January 25, there are two months of continuous purchases, pre-Christmas (Black Friday and Cyber Monday), “core” Christmas, from December 10 to January 5 and post-Christmas sales (starting January 7).
The intelligence of the case is to have consumers pending purchases for two months in a row, not only for reasons of Christmas gifts, but expanding the scenario to aspects of the home and even the automotive industry.
If we consider purchasing situations as “momentums” we can express that we have gone from 2 “momentums” to 3 and even 4 if we add Cyber Monday.
What implications does it have?
The expansion of the “momentums” breaks with the consumer budget scheme, expanding it by 20%-30% over what was planned. A consumer who planned to spend 100 euros during the Christmas period, thanks to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, will spend between 120 and 130, from Black Friday to Christmas there is one month left, 4 weeks of continuous communication about purchases, plus previous discounts and gifts last minute, very tempting, right?
Is anyone going to resist not buying anything else for 4 weeks? It is commercial success, the moment, time marks everything. If we surround it with ease of purchase, payment, delivery and an extraordinary experience, we generate the perfect virtuous circle.
And in 2017 we will break more records and our most worn-out credit cards.
Jordi Crespo
Jordi Crespo
