April 2020 - JEM News
The biggest online shopping event of the year is almost upon us once again, and with high-street stores and websites providing deals at every angle you can possibly turn your head at, it is set to be yet another barn-storming event with record-breaking sales.
Last year in Britain alone during the Black Friday week, shoppers spent six point five billion pounds in online retail stores; an increase of 15% from 2015, with a 25% jump in online shopping taking place. In the lead-up to the 2017 extravaganza, a projected whopping seven billion pounds is the quoted figure for the whole week, and given the gadgets and electronic items that are due to be released over the upcoming month, it could well surpass this figure. Black Friday has turned into a weekly event over the past couple of years with Cyber Monday taking place just a few days later. This is good news for not only shoppers unable to complete deals on just the Friday, but stores and businesses who can order merchandise in for the week on a day-by-day basis in a more spread-out manner to maximise sales numbers, rather than just potentially over or understock for just the one day, with the fear of not knowing if they’ll sell out and perhaps hand sales to competing stores when shoppers go elsewhere.
It appears that the likelihood of crowds and a busy, rowdy shopping trip didn’t deter people from grabbing bargains, with only a half a percent dip seen in footfall on the trend scale compared to 2015. Department store giants John Lewis had huge success and raked in record sales last year of just under £200m, which was a rise of 6.5%, which they saw in the previous year.
Amazon saw a large chunk of this by also breaking sales records in the US with almost $3.5billion spent on their products – an increase of 17.7%. PayPal also had a busy and incredibly successful time during this spell, with around $15,000 being paid from the consumer using their mobile device every second!
Long queues, packed stores, and wrestling for deals hasn’t yet put customers off of Black Friday shopping on-foot
What we all needed was another day with discounted deals and more of a chance to spend our money – enter Cyber Monday! Shoehorned into the Monday after the Black Friday sales event, something wicked (or wonderful depending on your bank balance) this way comes. Quick to become a craze with electronics and big sales numbers shifting on a wide range of items, it is yet another huge opportunity for companies to market their products and company name, shift stock and also get one over on their competitors – if all goes to plan by outselling and expanding profit margins. Cyber Monday posted similarly effective impressive rises to Black Friday last year, where customers spent just under £2billion on just that day. The Monday event increased transactions by a ginormous 76% from the year before; a magnificent increase that, even though it’s inevitably going to keep rising, it’s amazing to see such numbers year-on-year.
It could be that as Black Friday and Cyber Monday are now such huge opportunities for savings, customers are just not spending money on the big purchases they want throughout the year, and instead, are “making do” in waiting for this very week to splash out on specific deals. Some companies absolutely love, thrive and look forward to this week in the sales calendar – whereas others, who perhaps aren’t able to drop a lot of stock prices and don’t possibly have the staff to cover the store hours that bigger rival companies stay open for, aren’t particularly enthralled. Warehouses and fulfilment companies also benefit from the week-long spread of sales, with the ability to supply more stock and ship same-day if required from clients throughout the week on a moment’s notice, rather than a bombardment of orders to attend to all at short and urgent notice.
Shopping from the comfort of your own home is on the up in astronomical percentages
Black Friday’s revenue increased by 240% compared to a regular Friday of sales, with Cyber Monday taking the biscuit with an incredible 380% hike. It’ll be interesting to see the numbers this time around and just how high this continual spike of spending can go year-on-year, as it’s certainly not looking like it will slow down any time soon. One thing you can count on, though, is once this week of manic purchasing and multiple parcels arriving through the door each day is over, it’s full-speed-ahead to the holiday season and the Boxing Day sales!
Here at JEM Marketing we are able to take care of all of your fulfilment needs thoroughly and seamlessly throughout the busiest of times. Give us a call, or click on your preferred method of contact below to see what we can do for you and your business!
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