Black Friday '07 will have come and gone by the time this post sees the light of day and that's probably for the best. KMM -- the folks who host this blog -- had asked its authors to write something about the Black Friday and Cyber Monday phenomena. Cyber Monday is easy. It's a made up day that couldn't exist ten years ago and will probably turn into as much a national event as Black Friday has become in the past sixty or so years. Some simple and generally available statistics about Black Friday; Black Friday '07 sales were up something over 7% from last year. Interesting and not terribly surprising. More people shopping, more people disgruntled with their situation in life, more people unsure of their place in society and the US's place in the world. All of these things contribute to increased sales.
NextStage was hired by a company to observe and report on Black Friday. This was an expensive and extremely enlightening project. Twenty researchers in ten US cities, walking through malls, walking through downtown shopping districts, striking up random conversations in food courts, in stores, on streetcorners.
Three things immediately fell out and these I share in the rest of this post.
First, I don't know if sales of digital recording devices (Tivos, DVD recorders, etc) are up or down. I do know that very few people under the age of 25 are buying these devices for themselves. They may be buying them for parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, always an age demographic older than they are but almost never for themselves.Why?
Because (and this is very close to a universal quote) it's so much easier to watch the shows you like online. You don't have to bother with commercials, with interruptions of any kind ("I'll shut off my phone to watch what I want to watch"). It's truly "on demand".
I've never watched a tv show or movie on line. I had assumed there was advertising embedded in the video stream. If there is, it's either extremely easy to ignore, edit out or otherwise get rid of. Nice. With a large enough monitor I'll guess that you can open a video window from a site and let the commercial aspects play in the background windows while you watch your show in a commercial-less video stream.
Again, nice.
However, this does have implications for advertisers and marketers wanting to capture that lucrative under 30 market.
Several of our researchers got to watch Tweens watch tv and movie shows with little "popups" in them. I was one of those researchers and counting the number of popups per minute was a research project itself.
The question asked was "Do those bother you?"
The universal reply was yes, they do. Tweens are learning at an early age to block out such gimmicks. When quizzed on what popups had just appeared none could be remembered.
Again, advertisers and marketers beware.
The last item is something we didn't anticipate at all and is what we're calling "The Demise of Credit". More obvious in larger metropolitan areas, it deals with shoppers forgoing the use of credit cards because they are deemed no longer safe. This phenomenon is taking several forms.
In some cases it takes the form of "one-use" credit cards. A valid Visa, MasterCard, etc., number is generated and can only be used once, and often with a fixed limit. Clever, that.
Another strategy is the simple low-limit credit card. You can use it as often as you like and can never spend more than US$250 total. Another clever use.
Going along the lines of "they're not as dumb as you thought", some American youth are finding what they want to purchase, placing it on hold, going to an ATM to get the necessary cash then going to get the purchase. "Doesn't this mean you need a lot of cash in your bank account?" A growing fad is to do a modified check-kiting. Get overdraft protection, figure out when the expense kicks in and pay it off with a low interest credit card check beforehand. Very clever, that.
This one doesn't affect marketers or advertisers much, I think, unless they're marketing and advertising credit sources and banks. It is a strong statement for smart-cards being introduced to the US, I believe.
There's much more we learned. I met with the client yesterday to provide some high level information and they were well pleased.
Happy holidays, all.
Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.
Upcoming Conferences:
- Society for New Communications Research Annual Research Symposium & Awards Gala on 5-6 Dec 07 in Boston, presenting "The Blogging Power Continuum: How Bloggers & Their Audiences Share & Assign Power in a Knowledge-Based Medium"
- New Communications Forum 2008 22-25 April 08 in Sonoma Valley, CA
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