Online Kicks Santa’s B**T
Overall Holiday sales have come in between 3 and 4% over last year, despite some nail-biting ups and downs and thanks largely to price and hours-of-operation aggressive actions on the parts of many retailers. After my lone-sojourn out on Thanksgiving evening (grey Thursday see earlier blogs) I hit the upscale Deer Park, IL mall and found 30-40% off store-wide sales everywhere I went.
No surprise that online sales gains led the parade turning in a +25% Y/Y sales performance. 10% of all online holiday sales were mobile, more than double last year. Gains were dominated by the big online players, although some interesting small and niche players did well too.
An unofficial survey…still underway. I have had a number of people tell me they shopped exclusively online this year for their holiday gift giving. I have had no one tell me they shopped exclusively in stores.
Lots of interesting news from the online world this year, most of it caused by Amazon. Everything from more availability of inventory of key gifts, to price gouging on those same products, to the price compare app put out by Amazon inclusive of a $5 off coupon for any user who switched a product on a product scanned in-store to an Amazon based purchase of the same product.
The most interesting statistic to me was the 5 million Kindle products Amazon sold during December (including Fire). Obviously Kindles cannot be looked at as one time sales. Kindles, particularly the Fire are sales appliances and need to be viewed as both a sales platform and loyalty tool. Quite a set-up for the rest of the year. I wonder what strange bed-fellows this might bring together.