Holiday Shopping Trends

Nearly every type of retail business must consider holiday shopping trends and how they will

impact their business. The way that shoppers approach the holiday season will determine their

profit margin for the entire year. While more customers are making the transition to online

shopping for an increasing number of their shopping needs, brick-and-mortar retailers strive to

meet the challenges that these changes force upon them. The best-in-class video analytics, data

from point-of-sale systems, Wi-Fi detection of mobile devices and other sources from RetailNext

are designed to empower retailers with the resources for collecting, analyzing and visualizing in-

store data.

During the previous year, traffic experienced a drop of 6.5% with a decline of 3.5% in sales.

Brick-and-mortar retailers who are looking ahead to the 2014 holiday season, and who want to

be competitive with e-commerce providers, can benefit from these specifics to help them predict

the areas that they need to change. There are numerous factors that impact shopping behavior,

giving retailers the ability to identify opportunities for growth so that they can execute needed

changes.

Holiday Season Starting Earlier Every Year

Customers are well aware of the trend for retailers to start their holiday promotions a little earlier

each year. Most retailers take this approach to ensure they get their part of the money spent by

early shoppers. Competition is fierce, and every retailer wants to be first in line when it comes to

holiday shopping. The attempt to start promoting the holidays ahead of the competition has

resulted in the retail season being moved back to the point that many are starting before the end

of summer. Retail analytics can provide the retailers with the information about how effective

early promotions are and whether the added operating hours have paid off. Retailers often extend

their hours to include late nights and early mornings to give more shoppers the flexibility to fit

holiday shopping in physical stores into their schedules.

The Importance of Black Friday

Black Friday has long been considered the most important shopping day of the year. To expand

on this idea, many retailers went a step further than starting sales a day early in 2013, instead

opting to begin their sales promotions on Thanksgiving Eve. With concerns that the traditional

shopping day was in decline due to the increase in online sales, many had low expectations for

the outcome. However, many credited the sales that they had made through the previous week to

being those they normally would have made on the Friday after Thanksgiving. One way that

retailers can determine whether they are getting significant Black Friday sales on that day, or

during the extended hours they use to compete with online retailers, is through people counting

and conversion. This service provides the information needed to accurately measure traffic inside

of their store and various data points about their shoppers.

No Single-Focus Toy

From Cabbage Patch dolls to Furby, it has long been the trend to have a single toy that every

child wants but which is highly inaccessible. This is another trend that seems to be changing, as

more kids are becoming interested in electronic gaming, phones and computers. Although this

takes away any advantage that some retailers might have to use their availability of the season’s

must-have toy, it shifts the focus to areas where they can be more competitive, including pricing

and giveaways.