‘Innovation is the name of the game’ when it comes to holiday shopping
Have Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday changed forever?
Editor’s note: This article was provided to MediaNews Group by The Fox School of Business at Temple University in Philadelphia. It features a Q&A with Sheri Lambert, assistant professor of marketing at Fox School.
PHILADELPHIA » The holiday shopping season is upon us, but it might look a bit different from previous years.
With the world still in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, online shopping sales have grown considerably, and that trend is only expected to continue. Research firm Deloitte expects online holiday sales to increase 25% to 35% for the 2020 season and reach $182-$196 billion for ecommerce sales in November, December and January.
Sheri Lambert, an assistant professor of marketing and supply chain management at Temple
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University’s Fox School of BusiOne of the best things about ness, specializes in branding, shopping for the holidays is marketing strategy, retail marbeing able to browse a store with keting and consumer behavior. no set gift in mind or make an Lambert has been researching impulse buy. That’s a lot harder and following the retail and conto do online, right? sumer trends leading up to this
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year’s holiday season. Ahhhh, browsing. Typically,
“More than anything else, the consumers plan shopping holiday shopping season will no trips with a mental budget in longer just be about a few days like mind. That is, a consumer deBlack Friday, Small Business Satcides beforehand on an amount urday and Cyber Monday,” Lamthey plan to spend before venbert said. “Those days are now turing to the mall, or a list of every day, so companies, both big items they are in search of — an and small, will have to adapt.” Instant Pot for mom, a scarf for
In this Q&A, Lambert disa cousin and so on. We all have cusses how Black Friday, Cyber a list for shopping and we go to Monday and retailers’ sales tactics the store with our list. However, have changed in the pandemic when we are shopping or browsand shares her thoughts on what ing in an actual store we tend to to expect as the holiday shopping get sidetracked and find someseason moves into high gear. thing for ourselves. Grandma may not need those ankle booties, but I sure do.
This year, there won’t be any of the ‘ off the list’ impulse buys, or last-minute runs to the mall on Christmas Eve. People will have to plan their purchases carefully and they’ll have to plan ahead. They will want to do impulse buys but shopping online won’t be the same. They won’t necessarily find the item they want. Now, we are seeing a lot more social media ads that are popping up, so in that aspect, we’re going to see impulse buying. The problem is that the impulse buyer who relies on that to find that one really unique, great gift will no longer be able to do that.
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We have seen dra stic changes in all facets of our lives this year, and that now includes how we purchase gifts for the holidays. Could Black Friday be a thing of the past?
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A ‘thing of the past?’ No, but it’s definitely different this year. More than anything, we’re seeing more and more companies and retailers being creative this holiday season. Retailers are moving online and using omnichannel more, meaning a combination of in-store and online shopping. Retailers are shifting and focusing on how they’re going to be there for the consumer. We’re not going to fully say goodbye to in-store
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shopping, but retailers are going It sounds like we will see to get more creative with their inall kinds of changes this store shopping experience. They year. Could any of these be here are going to limit the numbers of to stay? Even if there’s vaccine shoppers and they might even use widely available next year, could a lottery system. Walmart choose to not open on
Retailers are talking about bethe night of Thanksgiving? ing innovative without creating an environment of mass hysteria like we’ve seen in the past. I think we’re also going to see more ways that retailers try to connect with customers like personal shoppers helping shop for you. We’ve seen this over the past six months with grocery stores.
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When we talk about Black Friday and Cyber Monday, we think about big retailers, but they’re not the only ones who see a sales boost during the holidays. How will small businesses manage the season?
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It’s a little bit of a harder pivot for them, just because they don’t have the big traffic that we associate with larger retailers. But I think that because they’re small, we will see that they’re nimble. They’re really going to lean heavily into their digital presence. The people working in small businesses are going to be used differently.
In the past, a small business might have three or four people ‘working the floor’ in a store, but now, those same four people are
going to be there but doing different things. They’re going to be running stuff to the curb, they’re going to be posting to Instagram or they’re going to be doing home deliveries. That is where I think we will see tremendous growth. Home delivery is nothing new; flower shops have been doing it for years, but now you’ll see other businesses start to do it as well. They will start relying on the husband or wife or college student that is working for them to deliver items that are bought.
I think what’s going to determine that is how successful these companies are and what their holiday sales and results look like. A lot of consumer behavior has changed from the simple fact that we’re finding out that we can do so much from home. The home has become our hub. It’s our workplace, our schooling place and because that has changed so much, our behavior as consumers has forever changed. If it’s fairly successful, I think the likes of Walmart may not open again on Thanksgiving. Why would they want folks to work overtime and then deal with so much wear and tear on the store and people fighting over items? Why would they want to do it if they’re revenue is still comparable? Creative out-of-the box thinking is the key for retailers. Innovation is the name of the game going forward. I would say that’s the case, both for large retailers like Walmart, Target, Best Buy and the small mom-and-pop shops. We’ve seen so much in terms of innovation already this year, and I think that’s a trend that will continue in the months and years to come.