Three Black Friday Observations
Sunday, November 27th, 2011
By Ben Arnold, Director of Industry Analysis
With Black Friday now behind us, it’s time to find out what was hot and what we can expect over the final weeks of the holiday shopping season. With NPD’s Anatomy of Black Friday study data as a gauge, a couple things struck me as I reviewed both the results and my experience at the stores.
Doorbusters didn’t disappoint those waiting in line. Doorbusters remained popular among all shoppers and purchasers of technology in particular. More than one-in-three (36 percent) Black Friday tech purchasers bought a Doorbuster item– an increase of four percentage points compared to 2010. The deep discounts across the board for CE products we observed (many of the TVs, Blu-ray players, and laptops I saw in were discounted 30 percent or more) could be a contributing factor to the rise, as some shoppers may have broadened their definition of a Doorbuster based on the level of the discount.
Consumers may be concentrating more of their holiday technology shopping into Black Friday. On average, technology purchasers completed a third of their total shopping obligations on Black Friday, a pretty significant amount. As my colleague Stephen Baker pointed out, factors such as the weak economy and deep discounts for a multitude of products (even outside of tech) may have prompted shoppers to take more advantage of all the savings available to them. Black Friday shoppers, overall, completed around 24 percent of their total shopping the day after Thanksgiving.
Mobile is the next frontier for Black Friday sales research. As expected, technology purchasers favored online sources for information on sales and Black Friday Doorbuster deals leading up to the event with 59 percent indicating this. While more traditional means of research such as TV commercials (25 percent) and catalogs (16 percent) also registered, I fully expect mobile apps (used by just 3 percent of purchasers this year) to gain more traction as smartphone adoption increases. Prior to my outing Thursday evening, I used a few retailer apps (most notably apps from Walmart, Amazon, and Best Buy) to find store hours, locations, and product pricing. Another tool that was truly valuable was Twitter which enabled me to search tweets referencing “Black Friday Deals” for real-time updates on sales and stock levels. A search of local tweets in my area was also great for gauging how long lines were at the stores.
Tags: Black Friday, Doorbuster, sales, TV
Consumer Technology | Ben Arnold, Director of Industry Analysis | 
November 27, 2011 9:02 pm
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