US "Black Friday" sales in a single day is less than double eleven

US "Black Friday" sales in a single day is less than double eleven singles day, there is no heavy snow, no biting cold wind, no high unemployment rate and pessimistic economic prospects in the 2008 financial crisis, for Americans, this year's gratitude Consumption seems to have a good time and a good location. The facts also prove that this year's Thanksgiving has set off a consumer climax. However, compared with previous years, more Americans choose to wear comfortable pajamas, sit in heated homes, and even hide in bed. The power of online sales has infiltrated the economic lifeline of the United States.

For Americans, the consumption on the "Black Friday" day, although not inferior to China's "Double Eleven Singles Day", indicates that the peak season of consumption at the end of Thanksgiving and the Christmas season has just begun.

"Gray Thursday"

"Black Friday" is also used in the United States to refer to the first day after Thanksgiving each year. However, the "First Financial Daily" reporter on the day of Thanksgiving, that is, at 9:00 on Thursday morning, when I turned on the computer, I found that many online stores in the mall have begun to sell "Black Friday" specials, and the discount rate is significantly higher than The first two years.

On the Macy's website, a low-cost sales product similar to the 2011 Thanksgiving Day, the cashmere sweater, was priced at $139 per piece for $39.99 each. This is one of the highlights of this year's "Messi Opening Promotion". The difference is that the store will not open until 6 pm, but the online sales start in the morning, and the color and size are available. For example, the Bella Rocket Mixer is priced at $39.99 each, and the special price is $7.99. Macy’s also sent Black Friday specials ads to residents’ homes the day before. On the advertising list, each special offer also has a website item number, which is convenient for customers to search online. In the simultaneous sales on the Wal-Mart website, the flannel children's pajamas are only $4.50 each, and they are sold out online at around 10:00 in the morning. On the Toyrus Toys R Us website, the original price of the crayons set is $26.99, and the special price is $10 per set.

Black Friday is often considered to mark the official start of the Christmas shopping season and is seen as a barometer of the annual Christmas sales performance of the retail industry and one of the most valued and busiest days for businesses in the year. Similar to China's domestic Taobao merchants, many merchants in the United States have publicized their list and price of Black Friday specials through the website a few weeks ago. Since online sales can be 24 hours a day, most merchants' "Black Friday" specials are actually sold from Thursday at 0:00, and the physical stores of these businesses generally start operating on Thursday night. More thoughtfully, as a means of promotion, many merchants also provide free shipping services, which makes people have more reasons to wear casual clothes, sitting in a heated home to spend online. This is exactly what people call "Gray Thursday."

However, there are still many people who choose to go shopping in physical stores. The "First Financial Daily" reporter came to the department store in Bronx, New York on the evening of Thanksgiving. There are department stores such as Macy's and JcPenney, and many vehicles have been parked in the parking lot in front of the mall. In Macy's, in addition to online discounts, there are many items for seasonal clearance. In JcPenney, the mall also offers customers a coupon of $10 or less for $10. Soon, each checkout point was lined up with a long queue of about 10 meters.

"It's too cheap." A Hispanic middle-aged male customer holding a sweater is preparing to check out. He told reporters: "It has been discounted to $14.99 and can now be reduced by $10."

And an Indian family parent plus 5 children are all dispatched, each person holding a commodity in hand to prepare for checkout. Mother holds a winter thick cotton coat worn by an 8-year-old child. "This is only $8, it is too cheap." The mother told reporters. The reporter flipped the price tag on the clothes and the original price was $70.

Network consumption is climbing

The Chicago-based research institute ShopperTrak announced on November 29th that the Thanksgiving and "Black Friday" two-day consumption preliminary report showed that the traditional physical shopping mall sales in the two days was 12.29 billion US dollars, down from 12.35 billion US dollars in the same period last year. 0.5%.

This result has really disappointed some traditional physical stores. Bill Martin, the founder of ShopperTrak, told the media that this year's shopping malls have carried out a more intense price war to ensure passenger traffic. Most of the discounts are between 40% and 70%, compared with 30% last year. ~50%.

As most of the malls in this year pushed the start of Black Friday sales to five or six in the evening of Thanksgiving Day on Thursday, part of the "Black Friday" passenger flow and sales were transferred to Thursday. According to ShopperTrak's statistics, the passenger flow on Thanksgiving Day this year has increased by 27.3% compared with last year, and the consumption has increased by 24% compared with the same period of last year, reaching 3.2 billion US dollars. The "Black Friday" passenger flow was no longer so crowded because it was diverted to "Black Thursday", which was 5.6% lower than last year. Sales of "Black Friday" also fell by 7% to $9.1 billion.

Compared with traditional malls that are weak or even shrinking, online consumption has maintained a rapid growth rate. Adobe Systems Inc. has tracked 4,500 e-commerce website statistics, and this year's Thanksgiving and "Black Friday" two antenna sales increased by 25% compared to last year. On the day of Thanksgiving, online sales were $1.33 billion, and "Black Friday" online sales reached $2.4 billion. IBM's use of big data research generated by online transactions found that on the Thanksgiving Day on Thursday, the e-commerce follow-up store began to discount on Thursday, and online sales on Thanksgiving Day increased by 14.3%. Although the sales of "Black Friday" did not reach the 13% expected by IBM, it also increased by 9.5% from the same period last year. The IBM report did not give specific figures for online sales during Thanksgiving this year.

If both offline and online sales are counted, retail spending for Thanksgiving and Black Friday will continue to grow. The growth point is mainly in online sales, especially the sales of mobile terminals. IBM's report shows that mobile terminals, including mobile phones and tablets, account for about half of the number of website views, up 25% from last year. About 27.9% of online sales on Black Friday were done through mobile terminals, up 28.2% from last year.

However, this year's Thanksgiving sales are accompanied by some protests. The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York was interrupted by dozens of "Frigson shootings" protesters. A mall in St. Louis, Missouri, was closed for business due to being occupied by protesters. Wal-Mart employees organized the biggest parade in four years and discouraged consumers from entering Wal-Mart in front of more than a thousand Wal-Mart stores across the country, demanding that the company improve its treatment. But Martin told the media: "Overall, the protests have had little impact on Thanksgiving sales this year across the United States."

Sales are not as concentrated as "Double Eleven Singles Day"

The sales of China's e-commerce Tmall "Double Eleven Singles Day" within 24 hours of sales of 57.1 billion yuan (about 9.3 billion US dollars) made the US business a bit shameful. All the traditional shopping malls in the United States sold only $9.1 billion on "Black Friday", even if the network sales of 2.4 billion US dollars is more than the Tmall "double eleven singles day".

However, American Thanksgiving spending is more fragmented. At present, "Black Friday" has gradually shifted to "Gray Thursday". Many sales this year, whether online or in physical stores, have been diverted to Thursday. And the US Thanksgiving sales promotion continues on the weekend. On December 1st, local time, when the consumers returned to the office computer, there would be an e-commerce company to hold a "Double Eleven Singles Day" CyberMonday event. And holiday spending will run through Thanksgiving to Christmas.

ShopperTrak expects consumers who are eager to buy a gift at the last minute before Christmas will turn the last Saturday before Christmas (December 20) into the busiest day of physical store sales this year. According to forecasts, 7 of the 10 busiest sales days of the year have not yet arrived. The "Black Friday" sales results may not be able to predict the entire holiday consumption sales that continue to Christmas.

According to the statistics of the Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China, the sales of China's retail industry for the whole year of 2012 was 16.17 trillion yuan. In contrast, according to the statistics of the US Department of Commerce, the retail sales of automotive products in the whole year of 2012 was 4.34 trillion US dollars, about twice that of China. Total online retail sales in the United States was $322.5 billion in 2012, accounting for 7.4% of total retail sales. However, the consumption in the United States is concentrated in the month from Thanksgiving to Christmas, and it is not as concentrated as the "Double Eleven Singles Day" one day.