With Black Friday now a fixture in the festive shopping calendar, Tina Spooner, Chief Information Officer at IMRG, comments on the recent retailer Christmas trading figures.
The Christmas shopping period underwent a pretty seismic shift this year, with Black Friday being cemented as a major event for customers.
Heavy pre-Christmas discounting has become a factor in the years following the market crash of 2008, leading to a test of nerve for retailers as customers have held out on making purchases in expectation of snapping up bargains – and Black Friday has built on this by focusing so much attention on a single day of guaranteed discounts.
While it led to fevered activity among customers – online sales surged 135% year-on-year for the market as a whole – there has been a negative impact on margins as evidenced by some of the figures being published by retailers this week.
The Black Friday genie is out of the bottle now and, while it will doubtless be an even bigger deal in 2015, retailers will need to develop clear strategies for capturing their share of the sales while ensuring it is a profitable exercise.
By Tina Spooner
Chief Information Officer
IMRG
www.imrg.org