This year's Black Five is quiet. Welcome to follow the WeChat subscription account of "Sina Technology": techsina
Text/Juny
Source: Guixingren123
Last Friday, the annual "Black Friday" shopping festival kicked off on time. But unexpectedly, the circle of friends was silent, and there was no atmosphere of frantic shopping in the holiday season.
"Is there any good discount you can grab today?" - "No..."
"Are PS5 and new switch available?" - "No..."
"Is the furniture you were looking for cheap?" - "No..."
After zero o'clock, many people lie in bed and look at various black five discounts, but after browsing for a long time, they can't help but put down their mobile phones and sigh: what they want to buy is always "out of stock", and what they don't want to buy is tasteless.
As the day with the largest commodity discount in the past year, affected by the supply chain crisis and the retail strategy adjustment of shopping malls, this year's Black Five undoubtedly disappointed many shoppers. Under the impact of the epidemic that lasted for two years, people's shopping mentality and way have changed significantly. It seems that the "Black Friday", which used to be noisy with gongs and drums, is no longer as lively as usual.
The shopping mall is empty, and "life preservation" is more important than shopping
As the most important stocking day of the year, "Black Friday" was a "fierce battle" for consumers before the epidemic. People will set up tents in front of the mall early and queue up all night in order to rush into the store to buy goods.
Customers will also rush to the discount area screaming at the first moment of opening the door and even fight for a product.
The picture is from The Guardian and the copyright belongs to the original author But now, such a picture seems to have become a thing of the past. As usual this year, some shopping malls in the United States also opened their doors early on the Black Friday. But unlike the rush to buy in the past years, people came in by twos and threes outside the door. Instead of pushing and shoving each other in order to compete for a commodity, people pick up the goods with clear goals and leave quickly.
In this year's Black Friday, it is hard to see the situation of jostling with each other and getting nowhere. Everyone pays attention to keeping a social distance, and many people also choose to pick up goods directly from the roadside. For example, Target has added more than 18000 "drive in" pick-up parking spaces, more than double the number of last year.
According to the preliminary statistical data of Sensormatic Solutions, compared with the level before the outbreak in 2019, the number of visits to physical stores of the Black Five still fell by 28.3% this year. Unlike the shopping discount activities that often started on Thanksgiving Day on Thursday before the epidemic, Target, Wal Mart, BestBuy and other major shopping malls still chose to close early the same year last year, resulting in a 90.4% decrease in the passenger flow on Thanksgiving Day compared with 2019.
The photos taken in some shopping malls on the day of Black Friday are from ABC NEWS/CNBC, and the copyright belongs to the original author People's unwillingness to go out this year was mainly hit by the double attack of the mutation epidemic and social factors. On the one hand, on the eve of the Black Five, the emergence of Omicron, a South African super mutant virus, made people full of concerns about crowding. After all, the harmfulness of this new mutant virus has not been fully disclosed, but it has shown that it is more toxic, spreads faster, and even has the risk of greatly reducing the effectiveness of the vaccine and increasing secondary infection, which makes people have to be cautious.
On the other hand, the recent frequent robberies across the United States have made people worried about the safety of Black Five shopping. This year's Black Friday, shoppers are not the only ones out looking for bargains, and thieves are also busy. The gang looting known as "smash and grab" was frequently performed in the Black Five. After the LV, Nordstrom and other stores in San Francisco were robbed in broad daylight last week, many stores in Silicon Valley also put boards in front of the stores to be vigilant. Customers are naturally unwilling to meet these "outlaws".
Shops and robberies frequently occur in the United States, with pictures from CBS | Under the supply chain crisis, the "Black Five" has become the "Black Moon", and the discount is no longer popular
In addition to the consideration of the safety factor of going out shopping, an important reason that affects consumers' shopping enthusiasm this time is that the discount on the Black Friday is not as much as in previous years.
This year, both businesses and consumers began to prepare for the shopping season early, and many discounts were released in advance. Black Friday has become a shopping month from a shopping day. Many consumers put their favorite products into the shopping cart early, expecting the record low price on the Black Friday, but found that the discount on that day was still the same as that on the previous days, which made people lose their desire to cut hands instantly.
In the context of the global supply chain crisis, merchants have changed their past promotion strategies in order to avoid out of stock and stable overall sales. For example, Wal Mart, Best buy, Target and other stores no longer hype the "rush to open the door" activity in advance as before, but started warming up the shopping season in physical stores and online malls from November.
"I can't help it. Many of our goods are still floating in containers on the sea. The goods ordered in August have not arrived yet, so we can't wait until the Black Friday, or the main products will be out of stock." A responsible Wal Mart store said in an interview.
Black Friday became black November
Consumers are also aware of the possible shortage problem, so in order to ensure that they can buy goods, many people will also choose to give up the lower discount that may occur on the Black Friday and buy in advance. If it is not possible, they can still price match. According to the National Retail Federation, 61% of consumers started buying holiday gifts before Thanksgiving this year. The survey released by Deloitte also shows that most American consumers have spent 80% - 85% of their holiday gift budget before the Black Five.
In fact, the shortage crisis does exist. According to the data of American ports, as of the middle of November, the number of ships queuing in the berthing area and waiting area of Los Angeles Port and Long Beach Port in California, the two major ports on the west coast of the United States, had reached 86. Salesforce said that due to logistics obstacles and personnel shortage, the entire logistics operation capacity in the United States was only 50% - 60% of that before the epidemic.
The problems in the supply chain also directly led to the shortage of goods and the reduction of discounts. Some marine products cannot be delivered on time, and many goods are sold out as soon as they are put on the shelves. Because there is not enough stock to replenish, the shelves are empty. On the other hand, many retailers have to stock up at a higher cost in order to ensure the inventory in the shopping season, such as choosing a higher price but faster air route.
Sea traffic jam at two major ports in the west of the United States. The picture is from Investor.com According to statistics, retailers in the United States will face an additional $223 billion in commodity sales costs in the shopping season this year, which will further reduce their profit margins. Of course, this part of the cost will also be directly passed on to consumers, resulting in reduced discounts. It is estimated that during the "Black Five" period this year, consumers are expected to pay an average of about 15% more for toys, clothing, household appliances and other goods.
"In the past, 20% off and 30% off goods are almost rare this year, usually 6% to 8% off. Don't expect too much, it's good to buy what you want." After shopping, everyone began to comfort each other.
Homeowners can also pass the black five: online shopping becomes the mainstream, and new ways of selling goods emerge frequently
Offline retail is in recession, while online shopping is in full swing. In the past two years, online shopping has obviously become an increasingly acceptable way for European and American consumers.
According to the statistical data of consumption analysis PYMNTS, in the survey of nearly 3000 American consumers, nearly 71% of shoppers bought goods in Amazon during the Black Friday this year, more than 41% of shoppers bought online through Wal Mart, and 28% of shoppers bought online through Target. According to the proportion, the number of holiday shoppers shopping online this year is 13% more than those shopping in physical retail stores, and this figure is 60% higher than that in 2019.
Shopify, an e-commerce independent station service provider whose stock price ran all the way during the epidemic, said that the sales of Black Friday reached 2.9 billion dollars this year, which also broke the record again. Shopify said that the transaction volume reached a peak of $3.1 million per minute. By 4:00 a.m. EDT, the sales of the whole station had reached $1 billion, four hours earlier than 2020. Among them, the countries with the highest turnover are the United States, Britain and Canada, while the most popular cities are London, New York and Los Angeles.
During the Black Five period, the promotion of emerging e-commerce is also full of tricks, and the pace of cross-border e-commerce sales on social platforms is getting faster and faster. According to the survey data of the Sun News, more than half of consumers under 35 years old said that they would use Pinterest, TikTok and Alexa voice assistant for Black Friday and Christmas shopping this year.
TikTok piloted the first "Black Five" online shopping activity in the UK this year. From November 25 to 30, the creators of TikTok will launch several "Black Five" live sales activities. British users will have the opportunity to buy cosmetics brands, PS5, iPhone 13 and other technology products at a discount of as low as 50%.
Snapchat cooperated with Coca Cola, Wal Mart, Amazon, etc. on the Black Friday this year to launch six immersive augmented reality (AR) store experiences. Users can access the Snap Holiday Store through the "For You" tag in the filter options and purchase goods directly. In addition to the holiday market, Snap also launched the AR trial function in cooperation with American Eagle, Fendi, Dior, Shein and other fashion brands to cope with the holiday shopping season.
Picture from Snap Pinterest officially launched the live shopping function on November 8. At 6:00 p.m. EDT from Monday to Friday, Pinterest will invite one of the creators of the platform to bring goods. The selection involves different fields such as fashion, beauty, home, food, etc.
Twitter also joined the e-commerce "scuffle" for the first time this year. This year, Twitter and Walmart launched the CyberDeals live event for the first time. Users can watch the live broadcast, buy goods, and participate in the live dialogue through Twitter. Yesterday, Jason Derulo, a musician turned creator, served as a 30 minute live broadcast anchor, introducing the audience to electronic products, household goods, clothing and other goods.
The first live broadcast cooperation between Twitter and Walmart, with pictures from Twitter Although this year, all major overseas social networking platforms began to learn from China's popular live delivery model, but after a round of watching it, people in Silicon Star had no desire to buy. Different from the anchors' online links, OMG and other "beating chicken's blood" selling methods in domestic live studios, at present, the style of anchors on these overseas platforms is generally "gentle", and many anchors do not understand the goods sold, which makes people really uninterested.
Compared with this awkward way of selling goods, the promotion mode adopted by Shein with Chinese e-commerce genes, such as sending ten thousand coupons at a time, lowering the threshold of package mail and full screen discount labels, seems to be more able to harvest consumers at present.
(Statement: This article only represents the author's view, not Sina.com's position.)
