US Thanksgiving Holiday Online Shopping Innovation Is High, Physical Retail Stores "Ice And Fire"

November is a carnival for consumers. China has "double eleven", and the United States has "black Friday". As an important part of the holiday shopping season in the United States, the Thanksgiving holiday shopping season, centered on "black Friday" and "network Monday", welcomed the "good start" this year. It turned out that Americans were also crazy about chopping hands.

Many people in the industry believe that the US online shopping innovation is determined by many factors. The increasingly perfect e-commerce platform, the stable employment market in the United States, the shortened schedule of holiday shopping season, and the change of retailer's logistics mode have prompted consumers to move from line to line. However, with the decrease of the "black Friday" stores and the increasingly fierce competition, many traditional retail stores have encountered difficulties and are struggling in the holiday shopping season.

However, there are also brightest retailers, such as Taghit (Target) and WAL-MART (Walmart). Not only offline passenger shop flow stability, online also can get good results. According to market analysts, sales on Thanksgiving holiday show that American consumption is still full of potential.

Before the Thanksgiving holiday, data released by the Conference Board in November 26th showed that the committee's consumer confidence index in November was 125.5, down from 126.1 in October and 126.6 in the market, declining for fourth consecutive months. However, Lynn Franco, senior director of economic indicators at the US Chamber of Commerce, said: "consumers' short-term expectations have improved slightly, and growth in early 2020 is likely to remain at around 2%. Overall, confidence levels are still high and support for solid expenditures should be maintained during this holiday season.

Richard Curtin, chief economist at Surveys of Consumers, said the positive assessment of Consumer Finances was at a record high and household wealth was also increasing, so it was optimistic about the holiday shopping season.

Online shopping boom

Eating turkey on Thanksgiving night and queuing up all night is a tradition for Americans to adopt "black Friday". However, this traditional way of shopping is gradually "out of favor". This year, many stores are untraveled. Analysis company RetailNext said on 2 th, the net sales of the entities in the Thanksgiving holiday fell by nearly 1%, and the traffic volume dropped by 4.2%.

However, this does not mean that consumers' desire to buy is decreasing, but that the way of shopping is changing: more and more consumers are turning to online shopping. Jill Standish, director of retail consultancy at Accenture, said that when "black Friday" was opened, we saw a decrease in the number of customers queuing outside the store. This shows that the number of online consumers is increasing.

Standish pointed out that bad weather has hit consumers' enthusiasm to shop. During the Thanksgiving holiday, most parts of the United States experienced heavy snowstorms, which not only cancelled hundreds of flights, but also caused travel to people. Adobe said that on the "black Friday", more than 2 inches of snow increased online sales by 7%.

According to data released by Adobe Analytics, the online trading volume of "black Friday" was 7 billion 400 million US dollars, an increase of 20% over the same period last year. The online trading volume of "Monday Monday" was 9 billion 400 million US dollars, an increase of 19.7% over the same period last year. The two day trading volume has reached a record high.

It is worth mentioning that the proportion of "night shopping" is on the rise. According to Adobe data, US consumers spent 2 billion 900 million dollars on the Internet on Monday night from 10 to 2 a.m., almost 1/3 of the total daily income.

In addition, according to the findings of the 3 NRF survey, about 190 million shoppers were shopping during the five day holiday shopping season from Thanksgiving to "online shopping Monday" (November 28th to December 2nd), an increase of 14% over the previous year. NRF also said that the survey showed that the per capita consumption of shoppers in these five days was $361.90, an increase of 15% over the same period.

The strong performance of the Thanksgiving holiday has boosted market confidence in the holiday shopping season. "The growth of online retail sales is encouraging," said Phil Rist, Prosper Insights & Analytics, vice president of strategic implementation. NRF expects retail sales in holiday shopping season to grow 3.8% to 4.2% over the same period this year, and total sales will reach 727 billion 900 million to 730 billion 700 million dollars.

Promoting consumption by multiple factors

Meanwhile, compared with 2018, the number of sales days between Thanksgiving and Christmas decreased by 6 days this year, making shopping schedules as short as possible.

NRF chief executive Matt Shay said, "Americans continue their holiday shopping earlier this year, but Thanksgiving is still a key weekend for millions of people. Whether they go to the mall to find something unique, or to find the most cost-effective products on mobile devices, this is when shoppers enter the high-speed operation.

Shay pointed out that more than half of the consumers surveyed by NRF in the first week of November began shopping. By the end of the weekend holiday, 86% of consumers had started holiday shopping, up from 77% a year ago. "With the approaching holidays, consumers feel the pressure to finish shopping in time," Shay stressed.

In order to grab tourists, online e-commerce providers are working hard in logistics. One of the main reasons why Americans didn't want to buy online before was that the logistics didn't give enough power and the transportation time was too long, which made them unable to receive goods in the short term. This year, most retailers launched the service of the next day in order to compete with the e-commerce giant Amazon. Take WAL-MART as an example, consumers can enjoy free delivery next day as long as consumers spend more than 35 dollars.

In addition to the next day's delivery, retail outlets including Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom have launched online buying transactions under the line. According to the statistics of NRF, the volume of online purchase transactions increased by 15% over the same period last year.

Alvina, a Chinese student living in San Francisco, told the twenty-first Century business news reporter that online shopping and offline picking are very convenient for people living in big cities. "We can ensure that we get the goods at the first time, and we can guarantee that we will not lose in the transportation process."

Bain said in his latest report that four positive factors have stimulated the growth of the shopping season this year. First, inflation in the United States is at an appropriate level. CPI's rise of 2.4% will not prevent consumers from making purchases, and higher prices mean higher sales. Second, the US consumer disposable income increased by 4.5 over the same period last year, which means that consumers can spend more money. Third, before the holiday shopping season, the recent retail sales growth is gratifying. Fourth, the unemployment rate in the United States in October was 3.5%, the lowest level in 40 years.

Ben Schwartz, a senior economist at the University of Oxford School of economics, said that consumer confidence will remain stable due to the positive employment market and good salary growth. This is also a key factor in ensuring us spending on shopping.

Traditional retail giants are mixed.

As the Internet is at hand, consumers' desire to get coupons or buy one get one has been weakened by queuing up. "Black Friday" is no longer as crazy as it used to be. This is bad news for traditional retailers and department stores that have long relied on the holiday shopping season to promote their "turnaround" or to make profits.

Sucharita Kodali, a retail analyst at Forrester Research, said that department stores are more dependent on black dollars than other types of retailers to win customers on black Friday. Shop assistants hope that besides picking new year's gifts for other people, consumers can also hoard their daily necessities, such as bath towels and bedding.

Today, chain corporation, led by Macy &apos (s) and Kohl &apos (s), have to try to attract consumers to shopping centers, because sales of these companies are declining and are difficult to adapt to changing markets. Messi, &apos With the weakening of the influence of "black Friday", the traditional retailers will be in a more difficult position.

Macy&apos, s and Kohl' s's earnings in November were disappointing. Both companies lowered their annual profit forecasts before the holiday shopping season came. Kohl&apos, s pointed out that competitors have been pushing ahead with the transaction and expect to continue to do so for the rest of the year. Macy&apos, s expressed the same view, although the company said there was no price competition in the third quarter, but plans to cut prices in the holiday season.

This year, Macy&apos, s shares fell more than 47%, the worst performance of the company since 2008. Kohl' s shares fell more than 27%.

David Berman, founder of Durban Capital, said that as Amazon continues to compete for tourists from traditional department stores, their situation will only continue to deteriorate.

Berman believes that if you want to save customers, you need to provide enough attractive discount. A survey conducted by NPD Group on 3485 consumers in September showed that the public and discount retailers are the second largest holiday shopping destinations for consumers. E-commerce is most popular.

But Berman admits that for those struggling retailers, offering discounts is particularly difficult because they may have good cash flow but also have large debts.

Some are sad and some are glad. Most retail analysts at Wall Street said that Taghit and Target (WAL-MART) and WAL-MART (Walmart) performed prominently on this black Friday. "From Thursday night to Friday, we see WAL-MART's traffic is at a healthy level," Paul Trussell, a research analyst at Deutsche Bank, said in a customer report.

Morgan Stanley stock analyst Kimberly Greenberger said, "these retailers have become the biggest holiday shopping places. They have a variety of holiday products, attractive prices and strong channel capabilities."

According to a survey by retail analyst First Insight, 55% of consumers this year said they preferred shopping at WAL-MART instead of Amazon. Although it is unable to compete with Amazon's market capitalization, WAL-MART's shares have risen 28% since early 2019, while Taghit's share price has risen 89% and best buy's share price has risen 52%.

Oppenheimer Co. analyst Brian Nagel said that as a barometer of consumer spending, "our simple analysis of data shows that the overall trend of consumer spending is still healthy. Those chain stores that provide the best and most attractive online services are most able to make full use of this solid potential consumption power.