Consumer Demands On Black Friday

Consumer demands on shopping and purchasing practices will have a very large impact on the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales and shopping patterns.  This year may be a turning point for the market from a retail saturation perspective and start a shift in the consumer purchasing and shopping practices that change the retail market dramatically.  Last year saw an increase in the electronic sales while the brick and mortar sales remained relatively flat.  Since that time consumers have expanded their embrace of the technology and there has been an increase in collaborative shopping tools that will impact the holiday and especially Black Friday shopping and purchasing to tip the scales again in favor of eCommerce.

One factor that will be very interesting to see is the impact of Amazon on the fashion and apparel market and sales over the holiday season and especially the Black Friday weekend.  I think that this can be one of the greatest factors in driving the change that consumers have embraced into the retail market.  Amazon is a pervasive brand and now add to this fashion apparel product and the impact on brick and mortar sales can be dramatic.  I see this as a key factor to increasing consumer ‘window shopping’ in the brick and mortar stores and purchasing online through Amazon to simplify the product purchase and delivery. I have said for a while that retailers need to promote the combination of purchasing in the store and shipping to the consumer’s home to eliminate dragging the purchases around while shopping during Black Friday.  Now we will be able to test out this theory with the entry of Amazon into the fashion marketplace.

I think that retailers may be realizing they have reached the saturation point from a brick and mortar perspective because we are also seeing a reduction in the number of retailers store hours on Black Friday.  This could be the result of two reactions;

1. Realization and acceptance of the eCommerce opportunity to increase sales without an increase in store hours.
2. Pushback from employees and even consumers as a result of the crazy expansion of hours.  It could be that employees and consumers are simply saying enough is enough.

This is more than likely the result of the brick and mortar sales results from last year and the retailer's acceptance that they cannot increase sales simply by opening the store earlier on Thanksgiving!  This year we see the trends of more major malls and many of the retailers not opening on Thanksgiving.  I think this is more the realization that the  retailers have saturated the time period to the point limited return,or potentially negative return resulting from longer store hours.

And now for the audience participation portion of the show…

ECommerce will have wide ranging impacts on both the retail and manufacturing sectors.  How can you focus these abilities to improve the consumer's experience?  Improving the consumer’s experience will require a re-evaluation of the sales channels, the manufacturing channels and practices and the supply chain channels and practices from the raw materials to the consumers’ homes.  In order to ensure and maintain success in this new reality you must harness the tools and capabilities in many new areas.  How can you support these continuously changing requirements?

Retail Cross Functional Relationships

Consumers are driving monumental change into the retail market through their embrace of mobile technologies, wireless capability expansion and collaborative relationships across the extended supply chain.  Some of the key factors in this relationship expansion are presented by the expansion of collaborative relationships driven, and encouraged, by mobile technologies and wireless expansion.  Cross functional relationships throughout the retail market and especially the extended supply chain are encouraged by improvements in technology and capabilities.  The driving factor of the changes to the retail market are these collaborative cross functional relationships that are allowed by the technology in combination with the consumer drive to mold the retail market to meet their changing lifestyles.

These changes now look profound in their reach and impact, however, these changes did not just materialize overnight.  These changes have come incrementally over a period of years driven in large part by consumer desire to simplify and support their changing lifestyles.   Many retailers have either ignored, or worse, fought these changes over the years causing a lucrative market of third party apps that support the consumer desires without dependence on one retailer.  It seems that while many large retailers were focused on a price war of goods, the consumer was focused on service and collaboration to meet their changing lifestyle needs.  

These changing demands and collaborative relationship across consumer, retailer and the retail supply chain may be best demonstrated by the Amazon experience.  Amazon does a pretty amazing job of bringing together the cross functional relationship collaboration across tools, technology, consumers, retailer and the supply chain every day with a focus on change and improvements to deepen the consumer relationship.  In the same way that Amazon reshaped the bookseller retail market, it is also reshaping the entire retail market now.  I think Amazon is a great example of a twenty first century department store, or probably more appropriately, a twenty first century mall.

Consumers are developing cross functional relationships in the virtual retail environment to recreate the mall shopping experience in a virtual environment.  The retail extended supply chain is beginning to recognize this direction and is engaging with consumers to develop these relationships to improve the consumer experience and encourage retention and future engagement.  Many of these pieces and parts of the virtual environment were available previously and the growth and acceptance of mobile technology along with wireless capabilities have been the catalyst factors to cause consumers to embrace these capabilities.  This is just the beginning now though as consumers are now using these technologies to put together their own virtual shopping experience in conjunction with their friends and family.  Retailers must now embrace collaboration with both consumers and the extended supply chain in order to survive into the next wave of retail experience.

And now for the audience participation portion of the show…

ECommerce will have wide ranging impacts on both the retail and manufacturing sectors.  How can you focus these abilities to improve the consumer's experience?  Improving the consumer’s experience will require a re-evaluation of the sales channels, the manufacturing channels and practices and the supply chain channels and practices from the raw materials to the consumers’ homes.  In order to ensure and maintain success in this new reality you must harness the tools and capabilities in many new areas.  How can you support these continuously changing requirements?

Retail Consumer Relationships

The new retail market being built by consumers on the tools and networks that have grown pervasive over the last two to three years is made up of a wide variety of participants and the capabilities of this new market continue to grow and expand.  Consumers are taking control of this market which is now sending the larger retailers into a re-evaluation of the methods and practices for interaction with the consumer.  Consumers are using the tools available to building a collaborative retail market that is cohesive and consistent across legacy channels.  Consumers are changing the retail market through their use and integration of tools, networks and technology.

Many large retailers are at a disadvantage in this new retail market due to their foundation of control based actions, focus on sales via channels that have a tendency to prohibit collaboration with the consumer.  While the large legacy retailers have been trying to maintain control of the market, consumers have focused on building their own market and capabilities to shop and purchase according to their desires and changing lifestyle.  The larger retailers have struggled for a long time to maintain their control of the market and now must struggle even more for a place in this new market.  This can be seen by the number and variety of both acquisitions and partnerships currently being developed by the large retailers to survive in this new market.

In the meantime, consumers continue to evolve and develop this new market based on their learnings, new availability of capabilities through new tools and mainly through collaborative relationships.  In fact, I think the next wave of the retail market is being created as a result of consumer collaborative relationships and embrace of the virtual marketplace.  This change is increasing in velocity as a result of the efforts of the millennial generation.  Millennials are leading the efforts in creating this new retail market to define and implement the new capabilities that are being embraced by the other consumers.  These changes are and new capabilities are encouraged and spread through consumer collaboration across a variety of social networks.

Social networks are providing the highway and the functionality to both advertise and then encourage adoption of new capabilities.  These changes in the social networks are in turn being driven by the need of social networks to develop income generating capabilities.  Consumer collaboration practices, especially as it relates to social networks, are the fuel that drive consumers forward to utilize and develop the tools that are creating and supporting the new retail market.  All of these cross functional relationships are coming together to help to shape the retail market to support the changing consumer lifestyles.

And now for the audience participation portion of the show…

ECommerce will have wide ranging impacts on both the retail and manufacturing sectors.  How can you focus these abilities to improve the consumer's experience?  Improving the consumer’s experience will require a re-evaluation of the sales channels, the manufacturing channels and practices and the supply chain channels and practices from the raw materials to the consumers’ homes.  In order to ensure and maintain success in this new reality you must harness the tools and capabilities in many new areas.  How can you support these continuously changing requirements?