By Samuel Taube
Transcript:
Samuel Taube: Joining us today by phone is Matthew Carr, the Club’s Emerging Trends Strategist, and today we are talking about Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2017. Matthew, thanks for joining us.
Matthew Carr: Hey, thanks for having me, Sam.
ST: So which one should investors be paying more attention to this year? Black Friday or Cyber Monday? And why?
MC: That’s an interesting question. First off, Black Friday is no longer the marauding hordes of shoppers like it used to be. There’s still a lot of people who go out and shop, but the number of people who shop online continues to increase while the number of those who shop in stores continues to decline. So it’s actually a pretty interesting trend.
When we’re talking about what you should be paying attention to, it depends on what you’re looking at. Now, during the past, like a couple years ago, Black Friday sales actually fell. They fell 11% year over year. That was the first time that happened since 2008, and the U.S. was in a recession.
Part of that is because of what we call Christmas creep. All of us know that as soon as Halloween ends, Christmas decorations go up, and all of a sudden Christmas sales start. So that’s where you’re seeing the impact there.
ST: So it’s been moving earlier over time, the beginning of that Christmas shopping season?
MC: Yeah. Christmas shopping season is now pretty much the first day of November. That’s a given, but what’s been very interesting for me over the last few years is Black Friday and Cyber Monday in terms of online sales. I’ll also talk about Thanksgiving in there because I think that’s a day that a lot of people overlook.
Last year, Black Friday was the largest online shopping day in U.S. history… until Cyber Monday. And Cyber Monday beat it out by only $110 million. But the big takeaway there is that Black Friday sales online – revenue from online sales – increased more than 21% in 2016.
That was more than twice what sales increased on Cyber Monday, and even sales on Thanksgiving increased 11.5% last year. So that two-day span of Thanksgiving – which begins generally around 6:00 in the evening on Thanksgiving – into Black Friday, that was almost $6 billion.
So it’s something to really pay attention to and look at because all of us now are being trained to have our shopping hours extend later into the evening. Right now the busiest times for online shopping are 8-10 p.m.
So it’s just the same as it was in the past – where there’s this big crush of sales and shoppers and everybody going out and doing all this kind of stuff – but more people are willing to stay at home and shop on those days.
So that’s why we actually end up having Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday generally referred to as Cyber Week because that’s where all of the online sales during that season are going to come from.
ST: Interesting. If you …read more
Source:: Investment You
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