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Important Takeaway from the Thanksgiving 2017 Retailer’s Verdict

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It was a good pre-thanksgiving shopping week for the U.S. retailers considering the follow-up report from the National Retail Federation (NRF). Earlier, the NRF had estimated around 164 million shoppers to complete purchases through different channels. The brick-and-mortar stores were surprised when 51.6 million U.S. buyers dropped in, while 64.6 million shopped both online and in-stores. In addition, it turns out that 48% of the total buyers found the deals to be relevant and inviting. This has surfaced as a welcome omen for the retailers who were at the verge of losing operations entirely.

Read the complete report by National Retail Federation at https://nrf.com/media/press-releases/consumers-and-retailers-win-big-over-thanksgiving-holiday

The thanksgiving retail verdict 2017

First things first, the expected volume of walk-ins at the offline stores were higher than estimated. While the experts were betting on an approximate 48 million in-store purchases, the outcome was a figure of over a 100 million people (combining the numbers for only in-stores, and for both online & offline).

The average spending of a shopper for store-only purchases were observed to be $49. This was a major win for the offline stores, and gave them the right boost when the industry was looking towards additional bankruptcy filings towards the year’s end.

“All the fundamentals were in place for consumers to take advantage of incredible deals and promotions retailers had to offer,” came a comment from Matthew Shay, NRF President and CEO. “From good weather across the country to low unemployment and strong consumer confidence, the climate was right, literally and figuratively, for consumers to tackle their holiday shopping lists online and in stores.”

Major takeaways from the Black Friday shopping trends

We have already discussed how the retailers were focused upon strong in-store strategies for Thanksgiving shopping season 2017. The three things that we highlighted as critical corrections for the stores to recover their lost glory were:

1. Select merchandise
2. Adequate inventory
3. Attractive pricing

Read: The Thanksgiving Shopping Storm and What It Means For U.S. Retail Stores This Season

Considering the percentage of satisfied consumers that the industry has seen over the past shopping season, it can be safely assumed that the retailers did a good job at all three fronts.

The retail industry had quite a few major takeaways from the Black Friday 2018 verdict. The following are the two most important ones:

1. Adopt the omni-channel approach
2. Deliver value-added personalization

For understanding this further, let us focus on one of the major observations from the report. It was observed that the older Millennials saw shopping season as an opportunity to spend the highest along the year, and dedicate a major portion of their spending to gifts. They had their spending amount planned and distributed throughout the segments.This hints towards certain evolving tendencies of the buyers across U.S.

It was also observed that the volume of shoppers went up from an estimated 66 million to an estimated 81 million on the Black Friday and Cyber Monday respectively. The other days of the shopping weekend, fared well for the retailers, but obviously not as much as the two prime shopping dates.

When the retailers are able to focus on suchlike developments in social tendencies, it becomes obviouswhat the consumers need, when do they need it, and how would they seek it.

Since we live in the age when customer expectations change faster than the time taken by businesses to deliver, it is the best time to take a futuristic stance into their evolving needs. The historical data only provides objective reference points for the decision-makers to base their market estimations. What it really takes is a typical reverse engineering of the observed metrics to decide the strategic adoptions they need to bring in to the stores—a purpose best served by customized predictive analytics.

Read how a U.S.-based retail chain leveraged predictive analytics for in-store estimations.

Bringing in the Big Data guns

The retail managers need to successfully analyze the information that flows within the stores, at competing stores, and around all social platforms. A predictive model helps create a window in to the future of the market scenario, through which the retail managers learn new possibilities and unlearn the ineffective strategies. Only then are they able to cater to their exact needs, be prepared when they come asking for it, andselect the channels when they are able to compel all cohorts of consumers towards a purchase.

This implementation, despite its profound impact on the profit figures, gets as simple as it could when retail chains adopt a solution that is made to fit for their operational segment and demography. All that you need to do, is ether build in-house capabilities to the same effect, or better still choose the right business analytics consultant with a truly global approach.

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