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Rethinking 2017 Holiday Strategy
The Thanksgiving weekend has typically served as a critical launch point for the holiday shopping season, as well as a crucial barometer between success or lackluster retail sales. Given its importance, retailers and malls have placed a significant amount of time and energies gearing up to execute an entire holiday strategy around the weekend.
That may be changing. As a result of online shopping, shopping habits are morphing as consumers discover and research products well before the late November holiday. That serves to extend the season by several weeks, and takes a bit of the pressure off that critical window. It also complicates the retail strategy.
Bazaarvoice, a company that helps brands and retailers find and reach consumers, took a look at data from last year’s holiday season that covers 5,000 brands and retail websites and discovered three key trends worth noting.
First, traditional seasonality patterns have changed. The emergence of e-commerce and smartphone technology has simply accelerated the process. People start researching, and sometimes even buying, holiday gifts much earlier than Black Friday. That showed up last year in electronics purchases, which began a full week (or more) before Thanksgiving weekend. It also changed “Panic Saturday,” the weekend directly before the December holidays, when parents typically make a mad rush to buy toys and games for their kids. Additionally, the holiday shopping season now extends past New Year’s when people make purchases with the gift cards they received.
Second, a culture of self-gifters has emerged. According to the National Retail Federation, self-gifters say they spend roughly 20% of their total holiday shopping budget on themselves. Smart retailers have adjusted strategies to appeal to those who are “treating themselves.”
Lastly, a trend that emerged last year is the rise of “pet parenting.” This category of consumer includes childless Millennials who consider pets a member of the family. Given that 50% of households have pets, and with more Millennials waiting to start a family, it is easy to see why pets are such a key part of today’s holiday shopping strategies.
For comments, questions or concerns, please contact Dennis Kaiser
