14 December 2015
Christmas is a wonderful time of year. It’s the season of giving, a period for reflection and a time when most of us are able to take a break and enjoy the company of family and friends.
But it can also be a challenging time for consumers choosing between the millions of products and offers available to find the perfect gift. Especially as the Christmas shopping window grows longer with each year that passes.
Nowhere is this more evident than the UK’s recently acquired tradition of Black Friday. Unheard of on this side of the Atlantic, until introduced by Amazon in 2010, the US-originating post-Thanksgiving shopping event hit the media last year.
With it came scenes that would not be out of place in a post-apocalyptic-blockbuster as shoppers fought in gladiatorial fashion to bag themselves a bargain. Police were even called into some stores to restore law and order.
Thankfully Black Friday 2015 went by without incident as many consumers decided to stay away from the stores and do their shopping online. According to pre-sales estimates this year’s event saw more than £1 bn spent on the web in a single day for the first time in UK history.
This year British retailers also chose to offer sales discounts before and after the last Friday in November to diffuse some of the chaos while others including altogether.
But what’s really interesting to me, as a Professor of Marketing and Consumer Behaviour, is how quickly this American import has established itself as the first day of the Christmas spending window.
As the traditional January and end of summer sales have given way to longer discounting windows Black Friday along with Cyber and Manic Mondays present new opportunities to pick up a bargain at the start of a traditionally busy shopping period.
Retailers understand their customers are naturally thrifty and more willing to part with their hard earned cash if they believe they have an opportunity to secure a purchase for a knocked down price.
Meanwhile the growth of online and now mobile shopping has brought price comparison and deal hunting to our fingertips, anywhere, anytime.
It’s all good news for us as consumers but it poses enormous challenges to retailers.
For bricks and mortar outlets large discounting events can cause significant operational issues from additional staffing requirements to longer opening hours. Competition from online also means it’s no longer enough to stack ‘em high and sell ‘em cheap.
Our high street favourites now have to offer a competitive experience something interactive and unique to draw customers into the store that go beyond a smart storefront or Christmas display.
Click and collect has been a success story for the retailer John Lewis, which now sells more than home delivery. But it can also pose significant challenges which can be accentuated by huge discounting events like Black Friday. Something Argos found out to its cost when customers took to social media to vent frustrations at its same day courier service .
Logistics can also be severely disrupted by unplanned events like bad weather or traffic disruption like the recent closure of the Forth Bridge outside Edinburgh, potentially leading to late deliveries and poor customer experience.
Significant as these hurdles may be, however, one thing is certain – our love of a bargain and retailers’ hunger to shift volume mean discounting events such as Black Friday are here to stay.
The only thing which remains to be seen is just what effect even longer and more frequent these sales events have on us as consumers. Will there come a point where they are so ubiquitous we no longer see the appeal of the retail sales bargain?
David Marshall is Professor of Marketing and Consumer Behaviour at University of Edinburgh.