It started with Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. It spread to Super Saturday – the Saturday before Christmas and Cyber Monday – the Monday after Thanksgiving. Now two more have been added. To retailers, the branding of holiday shopping days is one of the few tools they’ve found to be effective in combatting reduced sales in a sluggish economy. As a result, retailers continue to expand the number of branded Holiday shopping days. Two years ago, American Express created Small Business Saturday to encourage consumers to patronize their smaller non-chain stores. This year retailers invented Gray Thursday to get shoppers into the stores right after their Thanksgiving dinners. While this sparked protests from employees of the big chain stores and their families, the long lines and the sounds of busy cash registers seem to have quashed the protests.
Where will it end?
In 2012, because Thanksgiving comes earlier than usual, there are already two extra shopping days. Because of this and the addition of Gray Thursday and Small Business Saturday, retailers are expecting a better than usual holiday shopping season. As long as shoppers are excited and stores are making money, perhaps there is no end in sight to the expansion of branded holiday shopping days. Should there be? Marketers would say that the customers should decide.
Exciting results so far
While some react negatively to all the “hype” and commercialization, it is hard to argue with the results. According to a consumer holiday tracking survey by The International Council of Shopping Centers and Goldman Sachs, it is estimated that 17% of consumers, or up to 41 million people, decided to shop on Gray Thursday. When the figures are tabulated for the entire Thanksgiving weekend, the National Retail Federation believes 147 million Americans will bump up holiday sales by 4.1% over last year.
Last year was a resounding success
In 2011, Black Friday sales were $52.4 billion– up 16.4% from 2010. Cyber Monday sales were up a whopping 33% over 2010. Stores that extended their hours over the branded holiday shopping days of Thanksgiving weekend increased sales by 22%. Retailers that did not, saw an 8% decline in sales.
To understand why branded shopping days help to boost holiday sales, it helps to understand their origins.
Gray Thursday
Big box stores, such as Walmart and Target started the idea of opening early on Thanksgiving to grab shoppers before their competitors do on Black Friday. Since it was before the traditional opening of Black Friday sales at midnight, the media branded this early opening as Gray Thursday. Once these big box stores announced sales starting right after Thanksgiving dinner, their competitors felt compelled to follow so they would not lose business to their rivals.
Black Friday
The term, “Black Friday” can be traced to Philadelphia in the 1960’s. Traffic was so bad the day after Thanksgiving that police were asked to work 12-hour shifts. Since they were not happy about this, they labeled the day Black Friday. As time went on, the name evolved outside of Philadelphia to the date when many retailers saw their bottom lines go from loses (red ink) to profits (black ink).
Small Business Saturday
In 2010, to plant its image in the minds of holiday shoppers, American Express branded the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend as Small Business Saturday. Its aim was to create a nationwide movement in support of local stores so they could compete with the big box chains. It worked. It is estimated that 100 million shoppers patronized small stores on that day.
Cyber Monday
Cyber Monday is a term coined in 2005 in a Shop.org press release with the following headline “Cyber Monday Quickly Becoming One of the Biggest Online Shopping Days of the Year.” Based on their research, Shop.org/Biz Rate noticed that online sales increased significantly on the Monday after Thanksgiving.
Super Saturday
Being the last shopping day before Christmas, Super Saturday is the day that last minute shoppers flood retailers. Along with Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it has become one of the three biggest holiday shopping days. It attracts procrastinators that are too busy or lazy to do their shopping earlier as well as those looking for discounts from retailers that want to clear their shelves of holiday merchandise.
What does the branding of these days do for retailers?
By branding these five shopping days, retail marketers give them an identity that serves as a short cut into the brains of prospective buyers. As shoppers hear about these branded days, they begin to think of them as special events and opportunities to receive discounts and deals they are unlikely to get on other days. Branding these days also provides opportunities for retailers to offer discounts, open earlier, close later, and create lines. Yes, that’s right – lines.
How do lines help marketing?
If you ask most people about lines, they will say they do not like standing in them. However, lines attract people. They immediately communicate that what is at the end of the line is desirable and worth the wait. Great restaurants and movies have lines. Those that are not so good don’t. Many shoppers are attracted by the “wisdom of the crowd” that lines represent. By not allowing pre-orders, Apple deliberately orchestrated lines for the iPad2 because they did not want a re-occurrence of no lines at Verizon stores when the VerizoniPhone was introduced. The lack of lines became a news story that gave Apple and the Verizon iPhone negative publicity. Lines also attract “innovators” – people that love to spread the word about how they camped out overnight to be early in line to shop at a store for a particular product. It is part of their identity to tell others about this. As they do, they become initiators of positive word-of-mouth pyramids that promote the store and products to a much larger audience for free.
Look for the branding of more days
Because of the success of Gray Thursday, Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Super Saturday, stay tuned for more branded days that can drive shoppers to stores online and off. After all, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Sunday are still available.
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