What is it about November and crazy shopping events?
Following hot on the heels of Singles Day, Thanksgiving weekend shows that the biggest shopping festival in the world finally has some competition.
As the dust settles on Thanksgiving weekend and the phenomenon that is the Black Friday–Cyber Monday shopping festival, it’s worth a minute to reflect on what November 2016 tells us about online shopping habits around the world.
On 11 November the annual Chinese festival Singles Day saw e-commerce retailer Alibaba take a mind-bending $17.79 billion in 24 hours — up 32% from 2015 — setting all kinds of records along the way:
- $1bn in the first five minutes
- $5bn in the first hour
- Previous year’s record ($15bn) broken by 8pm
Singles Day has grown dramatically over the last five years — although 2016 saw a slowing down in its almost exponential growth — by contrast, the sales from Cyber Monday 2016 look like they’re set to exceed expectations and show a marked increase in the rate of growth compared to previous years, reaching around the same level as Singles Day 2012:
Interestingly, and unsurprisingly, November’s shopping season in the U.S. seems determined to expand beyond a single day’s activity: Between Thanksgiving ($1.93bn), Black Friday ($3.34bn), Cyber Monday ($3.45bn) and ‘Cyber Monday Deals Week’ — as Amazon are calling it — America’s great consumerist love-in is certainly filling out, even if it’s still some way from Alibaba’s online behemoth.
So when totted together, we’re probably looking at a week of activity nudging $10bn, putting it somewhere in the region of Single’s Day 2014.
The mobile story
While looking at the big numbers is of course interesting, it’s instructive to dig below the surface and look at some of the underlying trends.
The rise of mobile and social has been a key topic in e-commerce for some time, and with good reason. Singles Day 2016 saw 82% of purchases made on mobile devices, while the numbers from Thanksgiving–Cyber Monday show that mobile represented 47% of visits and 31% of total sales.
Singles Day has long embraced mobile experiences as a key shopping mechanic and this year was no different, with everything from a Pokémon Go style augmented reality game from Tmall to Macy’s bringing big discounts into their Buy+ VR shopping experience app:
Walmart, Kohl’s, and J.C. Penney all made significant updates to their mobile shopping experiences in the run up to Thanksgiving and these investments undoubtedly helped bolster sales over the holiday period.
As retail in ‘the West’ looks to fully embrace digital experiences, it’s not inconceivable that mobile shopping will not only be the normal mode of operation, but the dominant one within the next two years.
iOS vs Android
Another sub-narrative that fascinates me is the changing user bases of iOS and Android. It wasn’t that long ago that despite Android’s numerical dominance (over 81% market share), iOS users were seen as much more lucrative customers — more likely to buy and spend on their devices.
It can be partly explained by simple self-selection mechanics — Android’s focus on quantity over ‘quality’ of user means that it’s seen dominance across all demographics, whereas iPhones have long been a more premium device — but also by the different approaches to their respective web/app ecosystems, with iOS seeking to curate premium experiences as opposed to the ‘open market’ of Android.
But as Android matures and the roster of premium handsets starts to expand beyond Samsung’s S7 to new entrants like Google Pixel, while Apple covet a larger market-share, we’re starting to see a closing of the gap.
Adobe’s CMO platform showed that for Cyber Monday the average order value (AOV) of $128 for Android users compared favourably with a figure of $141 for iOS.
Conversion rates show a slightly different story, with iOS users converting 30% more efficiently than Android, showing that the stereotype should live on for a while longer, and that on big shopping days, desktop is still the most efficient platform — I can’t get the image out of my head of someone dusting off their old PC to do a bit of Cyber Monday shopping.
What does it all mean?
One thing that’s for certain is that as long as retailers are able to make a significant portion of their annual sales in a single day (or weekend), these shopping festivals are unlikely to be a passing fad.
What marks them out from most other festivals is their complete lack of pretence: nobody is ‘hijacking’ a religious festival for despicable capitalist needs, this — for better or worse — is honest to goodness consumerism.
Some things I think it’s worth keeping an eye out for over the next two years:
- The rise of mobile (or not) in the West: if China really is showing us a glimpse of the future, we can expect to see the 31% of purchases on mobile of 2016 move to 50%+ next year.
- A blip or a trend: Singles Day revenue growth slowed down significantly this year, is this the beginning of a natural plateau or a blip caused by China’s economic slowdown in 2016?
- Social commerce: a few years ago, WeChat and other social platforms used Singles Day to kickstart a rise of social commerce in China, maybe November 2016 came a little early for Facebook Messenger, but with shoppable photos on Instagram and Pinterest and Facebook starting to expand its payments service, 2017 could see e-commerce activity on social play a key role for the first time in the West.
Until next year!
