BUY BUY BUY
Big Billion byFlipkart Maha Bachat by Big Bazaar to Diwali sales? Or should we be looking for regional triggers before Onam, Pongal, Puja, Baisakhi and other regional New Years? Opinions could vary.
The Maha Bachat sales of Big Bazaar are proof that a well orchestrated effort in the brick-and-mortar format can do exceedingly well. The Maha Bachat sales have seen serpentine queues outside Big Bazaars around the country. The offers during these 5-day sales have been attractive but not really mind-blowing. With even more mind-blowing offers that would sweep consumers off their feet, the equivalent of an Indian Black Friday could be a reality.
Retailers could look at the way Akshaya Tritiya has been branded, now universally seen as an auspicious day to buy gold it didn’t really exist on the scale that we see it in today, until a few decades back. It was the World Gold Council (WGC) that helped create this phenomenon. WGC pioneered this effort with some leading jewelers in select cities in the late 1990s. So dramatic was the spurt in sales that soon almost every jeweler in India was offering freebies and price-offs on Akshaya Tritiya. And soon enough the third ‘ tithi’ of the brighter half in the lunar month Vaishakha, sometimes also referred to as ‘ sarva siddhi’ day became a bellwether day for the entire jeweler fraternity! So, an Indian Black Friday is eminently doable with the right stimuli and the right incentives.
For the US economy around 30 percent of annual retail sales occur between Black Friday and Christmas. For some retailers, such as jewelers, it’s even higher, nearly 40 percent. Not very dissimilar to our Diwali season. But what makes Black Friday stand out is that nearly 137 million people braved the crowds across America over the four-day weekend last year, 600 percent more than any other festive day in the year. What is more important is that Black Friday is expected to pull in $682 billion in sales on that day this year, with the average American shopper spending a whopping $967. Black Friday also creates nearly a million temp jobs every year.
An Indian Black Friday could be the best practical execution of this year’s Nobel laureate Richard Thaler’s ‘nudge theory’, a subtle trigger of self-interest for consumers that can metamorphose the economy.