With consumers taking advantage of deep discounts on flat-panel TVs this holiday season, The NPD Group’s recent TV Market Basket Study is a well-timed look at the entire value of the TV purchase– accessories and add-ons included. The study found, on average, $135 is spent on accessories and services (such as extended warranties) per television set sold. Added up, this equates to a sizeable amount of incremental revenue above the purchase price of the TV.
Read more »
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.
Read more »
Preliminary results from The NPD Group’s The Anatomy of Black Friday study show that the aggressive pricing posture taken by the CE industry appears to have paid off. Significantly more tech shoppers were driven into the stores (or online) by the prospect of a great, desirable product at a great price. Almost 65 percent of tech purchasers bought in 2011 because they saw what they really wanted on sale. In addition, 28 percent were enticed by the big sales available at the specific retailer where they were shopping. Both of those numbers were approximately 50 percent higher than the overall population of Black Friday shoppers and 10 percent higher than last year.
Read more »
After doing much of the cooking for my family’s epic Thanksgiving dinner, I wrestled with the prospect of going out into the cold November night to meet up with 600 of my closest electronics buying friends. My curiosity, however, got the best of me and I ventured out after my family had long gone to sleep. As we all know, Black Friday starts earlier and earlier each year and this Thanksgiving night, around 11pm still smelling of pumpkin pie, I set out to hunt for bargains. I visited my local Best Buy and Walmart– strategically mapped out near my home to avoid the inevitable traffic jams.
Read more »
With stores opening their doors on Thursday for Black Friday sales this year, our annual Black Friday retail adventure encompassed a much wider swath of time and space then we have covered in previous years. The end result was some surprising insights and some, what we hope, are interesting observations on how this change has impacted Black Friday.
Read more »
Tags: Apple, Best Buy, Black Friday, hhgregg, Office Depot, Radio Shack, Target, Toys R Us, Walmart
Consumer Technology | Stephen Baker, Vice President, Industry Analysis | 
1:43 pm | 
Comments (0)
The holiday season kicked off on Thanksgiving evening with some of the most aggressive pricing, promotions, and sales tactics in years. But those rock-bottom prices and record early-opening hours illustrate the concern of the entire technology industry views this holiday season. NPD has been predicting that this would be the worst holiday since 2008, on a revenue basis, and the early season aggressiveness from the industry confirms this level of concern.
Read more »
NPD has released its Consumer Technology Black Friday week sales data, and based on my analysis I think the most reasonable conclusion is to view the results as a glass being half full. Yes, the overall sales (in dollars) were down, but the pockets of strength we saw were surprising, and in my view encouraging, at least if are willing to look beyond Dec 25th.
Read more »
My colleague Steve Baker has lamented the lack of much excitement around Black Friday this year. Indeed, perhaps the only major “green field” category this year — tablets — were confined to the iPad and carrier stores selling a Galaxy Tab that isn’t capturing much excitement in that channel. But while it doesn’t deliver the kinds of doorbuster demand of the flat–panel TVs to which they attach, Blu-ray players were primed for high volumes this holiday season.
Read more »
As the early returns come in on the holiday shopping weekend results from various sources, including NPD’s Anatomy of Black Friday consumer survey, a few things are becoming clear. While brick-and-mortar stores likely had a tough time on Black Friday, as we estimate electronics sales up only minimally overall, online sales truly came into their own this year. For those of us in the consumer technology business that is no surprise, sales have been growing rapidly online for a few years. But a funny thing happened on the way to this sales growth. What clearly propelled this year’s growth was the online marketplace’s embrace of traditional retail marketing tactics.
Read more »
Having just returned from my annual Black Friday morning shopping trip I am struggling to suppress a yawn. Not just because I got up at 2:45AM, but because I have to confess, once again, that I just didn’t see anything as I shopped today that either changes my general outlook on the holiday for tech or provides a window into how aggressively consumers may be shopping for electronics. As I said last year, giving away highly-desirable products in limited quantities for outrageously low prices is always going to draw a crowd. However, at some point you begin to bump into the realities of installed bases, low prices, and relevancy. This year’s struggle to determine what the most relevant, most exciting products to sell was especially acute and I believe will lead to lackluster results, similar to what we’ve seen all year.
Read more »
Subscribe
