’TIS THE SEASON
Data shows Canadians are starting holiday shopping earlier,
The lines between Black Friday and the rest of the holiday shopping period are blurring as more retailers launch marketing campaigns beginning right after Halloween, according to new retail data and analysts.
“It’s less about this one particular day — Black Friday — and it’s more about this micro-season of retail,” said Robert Begg, vice-president of product marketing, social and advertising products, Salesforce, a customer relationship management company.
“It starts picking up after Halloween and goes right through to the beginning of next week — Halloween is almost like a light-switch.
“Canadians have no particular allegiance to a day — Black Friday or Cyber Monday or Boxing Day — they just want deals and to take advantage of them online, either at home or on the go.”
Over a period of 30 days, from Oct. 17 to Nov. 17, Salesforce tracked Canadian and American social media conversations about Black Friday on blogs, forums, Twitter and Instagram.
Salesforce captured 28,000 mentions of Black Friday and Cyber Monday on social media in Canada, and Amazon was mentioned in 4,000 of those conversations. Many shoppers seemed to have specific purchases in mind, but were keeping their spending in check, in anticipation of Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals.
Among the microtrends in the data: Canadians are voicing a desire to keep their shopping within the country, a trend backed by research, perhaps not surprisingly, from Square, a payment technology company for local businesses.
Analyzing purchasing data from 2016 and 2017, Square predicts holiday spending at local retailers in Canada will actually peak on Saturday, Nov. 25 this year.
Its data has found that Canadian consumers are more closely mirroring American holiday shopping patterns, shifting their Boxing Day shopping to shopping on Black Friday, the Saturday after Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Local shoppers are a different brand of bargain shoppers, according to Cathy Vigrass, head of Square,
“People know that even if they miss (Black Friday), it’s just going to continue on anyway — it’s almost never-ending.” FARLA EFROS RETAIL EXPERT
Canada. “Shoppers know they have to purchase unique and one-of-a-kind gifts from local businesses early in the holiday season.”
Meanwhile, Black Friday shopper traffic at Yorkdale — one of Canada’s busiest malls — has increased every year since 2014, including a 25-per-cent increase in 2016 over 2015, after the mall added 300,000 square feet of new retail space.
On a typical Friday, the mall attracts about 70,000 people, but that number spiked at just under 135,000 people on Black Friday 2016.
Yorkdale mall general manager Claire Santamaria said many retailers this year staged advance VIP events for customers, offering special deals or new merchandise and a more tailored shopping experience.
Several first-to-market retailers and retail concepts have recently launched in the mall, including a new flagship Sporting Life, a large new RH (Restoration Hardware) over four floors, as well as a Hunter and a Moose Knuckles. A Cheesecake Factory opened on Tuesday.
As a result, traffic has been up significantly over the last two weekends.
“We are preparing for a bigger Black Friday than last year,” Santamaria said.
Retail expert Farla Efros, president, HRC Advisory, said there has been a definite blurring of the lines around Black Friday. She said the season now begins after back-to-school ends and extends past the New Year into Boxing Week.
“People know that even if they miss (Black Friday), it’s just going to continue on anyway — it’s almost never-ending,” Efros said.
Thirty-one per cent of Canadians use Black Friday and Cyber Monday to shop for themselves, according to a survey by Retailmenot.ca.
Holiday spending in Canada will hit an all-time high of $1,400 per person this year on gifts, food, alcohol, entertaining and decor, the survey also found.
According to the survey, roughly half of Canadians plan to shop on each of the big three holiday shopping days: Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Boxing Day.
The online survey of 1,509 randomly selected Canadian adults who are Angus Reid Forum panellists was conducted from Oct. 27 to Oct. 28. The margin of error — which measures sampling variability — is plus or minus 2.5 per cent, 19 times out of 20.