Black Friday and Cyber Monday Have Merged
Black Friday and Cyber Monday have merged in many ways, creating a weekend-long sales event that generated over $11 billion in online sales in the US last year. In recent years Black Friday has also been adopted by traditional and online retailers across the globe, including in the UK, Mexico, India, France, and Australia. 2015 was something of a watershed year with over £1 billion worth of online sales marked up on Black Friday and a further £968 million a few days later on Cyber Monday.
Black Friday 2015: A Look Back
Last year we looked at the most popular key promotional feature space across Amazon, Target.com, Macys.com, and Walmart.com for the Black Friday/Cyber Monday period in 2015. Retailers constantly rotated categories and items in order to entice shoppers to keep checking back throughout the event.
Despite the changing items, we found that the categories with the deepest discounts over the course of the weekend included Clothing, Home & Kitchen, Electronics, Sports & Fitness, and Toys. Electronics was the clear winner in terms of sales volume, with roughly 20% of all items sold over the period being electronics.
Average discounts ranged from 30-40% across all retailers, with Macy’s discounts on clothing hitting as high as 60% off on Cyber Monday. As seen on the chart below, the day of Black Friday had the highest rate of discount with an average discount of 35% across all categories.
Black Friday 2016: What to Expect?
So what can we expect this year? More online sales for one thing, with the ongoing growth in ecommerce expected to drive even greater volumes via the channel in 2016. Consumers have shifted more and more of their holiday season shopping to the online channel as the search for better bargains, free shipping, and improved product availability. On top of that the convenience factor also plays a significant role in the move to ecommerce. Check back soon to see our detailed predictions for 2016’s Black Friday shopping holiday.
