Black Friday just keeps growing, doesn’t it? Each year, it seems to start earlier and end later, and it’s no longer a single day—or even a single week. You’ve probably read reports speculating that we have reached “peak Black Friday,” and that the pendulum has started swinging in the opposite direction.
REI’s popular #optoutside campaign is an obvious sign of Black Friday fatigue, and a welcome reminder that retail employees are people, too. But nothing compares to Obvious Plant’s expert Black Friday fake ad trolling/comic relief (my favorite is the free falcon with purchase of $75 or more – see image to right).
While the 24-hour period following Thanksgiving Day no longer carries quite the weight it used to, the weeks bookending Thanksgiving Day are big, big business for retailers—and, increasingly, for mobile. Here’s a quick wrap-up of some of 2015 Black Friday’s compelling numbers:
- “Mobile had a 37 percent share of online sales on Thanksgiving Day, up from 26 percent last year and 21 percent in 2013.” Conversely, “bricks-and-mortar sales for Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday combined totaled a projected $12.1 billion, which is a decrease from 2014.” (Read more on Mobile Commerce Daily)
- “Among Americans who shopped online this year, 85 percent cited avoiding crowds as their top reason, 79 percent said saving time and 78 percent cited finding better or similar deals online compared to in stores. Interestingly, 57 percent of consumers indicated they chose to shop online to enable them to shop outside of physical store hours.” (Read more from the Consumer Technology Association)
- “This is the first year that consumers are doing more shopping on their mobile devices than their desktops.” (Read more on MediaPost)
The takeaways:
- Retailers have to have a compelling, user-friendly mobile presence.
- Consumers aren’t going to put their mobile devices down. So rather than losing store foot traffic to mobile sales, retailers must figure out how to use mobile to drive shoppers into their brick-and-mortars. (That’s something Phunware has a pretty good handle on, by the way—check out this infographic to see how one retailer used mobile to drive in-store sales of $500,000 in just three days.)
What mobile impact have you seen this holiday shopping season? Comment below to let us know!
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