Intro written by Claudia Folgore-McLellan of Visual 8 Creative
The post-Covid-19 market will be considerably tough for smaller retail businesses to compete, given the challenges of job losses and changing consumer behaviour – this could be for some time to come.
The idea of ‘Black Friday’ seems to be dominating both online retailers and the main players that have supporting online stores and effective ecommerce capabilities. What started as an American ‘holiday’ and busiest shopping day where many stores offer highly promoted sales and opening very early to accommodate an storm of consumers has now also become popular in South Africa.
This year, however, we’re seeing campaigns where the concept of ‘Black Friday’ has been prolonged – most likely to encourage price-sensitive customers to participate without the added pressure of the traditional single day madness of ‘Black Friday’. The retail sector defines it’s annual sales from consumers’ Festive Season spend and it’s anticipated that this year is going to be quite different.
We see Zando, a solely online store, promoting; ‘EVERY FRIDAY IS BLACK FRIDAY 6–30 November 2020’ with daily specials packed with up-to-70% off deals and buyers need to opt into their newsletter in order to receive the latest information.
Makro has the ‘BLACK FRIDAY EXTENDED’ promotion adding, ‘WHY WAIT? OUR BLACK FRIDAY IS EVERYDAY.’ Four weeks of offers where new product deals are released weekly.
Game has the ’28 BLACK FRIDAYS’ promotion where ‘BLACK FRIDAY IS EVERY DAY THIS NOVEMBER @ GAME.’ The Game website has a countdown timer showing the days, hours, minutes and seconds left of the promotion and they add, ‘When it’s gone, it’s gone.’ To inject the usual urgency shopping on Black Friday.
It will be interesting to see if these promotions will have what it takes to ultimately encourage the kind of consumer spending that can stimulate and boost economic growth. Take 5min to listen to this weeks’ podcast with PEAR CEO Shanaaz Nel and Freelance journalist and communication strategist, Niki Moore
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