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With shopping deals arriving earlier and earlier each year, Black Friday appears to have lost further buzz in 2023.
Sensormatic Solutions has predicted that Black Friday, which has traditionally marked the beginning of the holiday shopping season, will continue to be the busiest shopping day of the season, followed in the top five by Super Saturday (Dec. 23), the third Saturday in December (Dec. 16), the Friday before Christmas (Dec. 22), and the Saturday after Black Friday (Nov. 25).
However, PwC's holiday survey found that just 19% of shoppers were planning to shop on Black Friday, with 27% planning to shop in early November and 16% planning to shop between Cyber Monday and Christmas in anticipation of last-minute deals.
NRF’s 2023 holiday shopping outlook notes that a record 196.7 million consumers shopped over the five-day Thanksgiving weekend — extending from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday — in 2022. Last year, the daily volume of shopping-related searches containing “deals” grew over 2,300% during the week of Black Friday and Cyber Monday compared with September, showing shoppers hunting for deals around the days.
However, the NRF noted that consumers are increasingly preferring to spread their holiday shopping over the entire season. Retailers have adapted with “Black Friday” deals arriving in stores and online in October.
Since the pandemic, the shift to start introducing deals earlier was accelerated by Amazon’s launch of a Prime Early Access Sale in mid-October 2022 that showcased a wide range of holiday deals, followed this year by the Prime Big Deal Days event on Oct. 10 and 11.
Additionally, many retailers have decided to no longer open on Thanksgiving to give store associates a break. This has eliminated many of the in-store doorbuster events that arrive on Thanksgiving afternoon or evening to add excitement — and media coverage — around Black Friday.
A recent report from Coveo, titled, “Black Friday to Cyber Week Evolution: What Are the Winning Strategies, Now?” based on interviews with 92 retailers, found that most retailers surveyed still rely on the Black Friday/Cyber Week peak for driving holiday revenues. However, better-performing retailers were found to be increasingly focused on delivering relevant and personalized offers to customers in order to strategically drive inventory sell-through throughout the holiday season.
“It’s clear from our research that industry-wide events are here for the foreseeable future — but no longer as mass marketing, ‘one-size-fits-all’ events,” said Brian Kilcourse, managing partner at RSR Research, which conducted Coveo’s survey. “Gone are the days when you get people in the door with a sale on one item. It’s now all about personalized offers and deals.”