As expected, Thanksgiving weekend brought in the big bucks
for retailers: online
sales alone surpassed $20 billion,
according to Adobe Analytics. And while overall brick-and-mortar traffic
decreased by 1.7% on Thanksgiving
and Black Friday compared to 2017, malls and shopping centers saw an
approximately 4% traffic boost. Mobile
was the big star, however, with smartphones accounting for 49% of all
e-Commerce traffic. But the weekend also brought site outages at some of the
nation’s best-known retailers, including Walmart,
J.Crew, Lowe’s, Best Buy and Office
Depot, indicating that even the biggest players can stumble in handling the
holiday rush.
The RTP team
shares their biggest takeaways from Thanksgiving weekend, and what lessons
retailers should take heading into the rest of the holiday season.
Debbie Hauss,
Editor-in-Chief: I’m just amazed at the number of major brands, including Walmart and Lowe’s, that had site outages during the weekend. I guess that
could be considered good and bad news, since it shows that a lot of people
were trying to get on their sites, but if shoppers are not able to actually
shop, they will abandon the site and go somewhere else. So to me it’s more bad
news than good news. Research confirms this: According to ITIC in 2017: average hourly outage costs
can reach more than $5 million, and
probably more than that during the busiest shopping days of the year.
Otherwise, I think the Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend is having a serious
identity crisis. One of the most notable stats from the weekend was the $6.2 million in online sales
recorded on Black Friday, up more than 23% YOY and inching toward the Cyber
Monday results. It would be great to see some updated marketing messaging in
2019.
Adam Blair, Executive
Editor: My big takeaway from the flurry of BFCM (Black Friday Cyber Monday)
results is that retailers (and consumers too) should pace themselves: the
holiday season is a mini-marathon, not a sprint. Much as we in the media like
to focus on this five-day period for portents of what’s to come, there’s still
nearly a month to go until Christmas — including, as ShopperTrak noted, four Saturdays during the
month of December. I’m heartened that the season has started strong, and also
that a new crop of consumers appear to be participating (Bluecore’s statistic
that 57% of all Black Friday sales were to first-time
customers). My other takeaway is that retailers should make hay while the sun
shines; the weekend also brought news of job cuts at G.M. In combination with the
delayed impact of Trump’s nonsensical tariffs, it seems quite possible that
holiday 2019 will be a less merry season than 2018.
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Glenn Taylor, Senior
Editor: This might be only a tiny tidbit compared to the overarching themes
of the holiday weekend, but I couldn’t help but notice Jet.com’s poor performance. The company saw an online sales decline
of 57% in the week leading up to Thanksgiving,
a 6% drop on Thanksgiving Day and
Black Friday and a 39% drop on Cyber
Monday. Parent company Walmart.com
certainly isn’t struggling in this arena; it saw a 67% sales gain in the week leading into Thanksgiving, a 23% jump on Thanksgiving Day and Black
Friday and a 32% gain on Cyber
Monday. The numbers suggest that Walmart is focusing
almost exclusively on its flagship site going ahead, but I think
this also shows that Jet.com will be playing a different role. I actually saw a
TV spot for Jet.com over Thanksgiving weekend, indicating to me that Walmart isn’t
giving up on the site. The commercial was very New York-centric, and that’s in
line with the strategy of Jet.com going forward. I’d be interested
to see where the Jet.com brand is taken beyond this holiday season, and whether
it will be positioned purely as an urban commodity.
Bryan Wassel,
Associate Editor: The results of this past weekend showed that while the
mobile hype is real, many people are too eager to see it as a complete reversal
of the retail order rather than just a shift in the way people have always
shopped. Will mobile devices continue taking a greater share of e-Commerce
traffic? Yes, as Salesforce noted, the format already
overshadowed desktop on Thanksgiving. Does this mean the great retailpocalypse
is finally upon us? No, because five out of every six dollars will
still be spent at brick-and-mortar, going by Adobe’s
stats. What Black Friday and Cyber Monday showed us was a slow, steady
evolution of how people shop — and the real winner is convenience, not any
single channel. After all, omnichannel retailers captured 88% of
Thanksgiving and Black Friday sales, according to the International
Council of Shopping Centers. People are still visiting stores, they
just expect the experience to be enhanced by mobile.
