Black Friday: Internet Infiltration

Well, if you're anything like my husband, Black Friday began at 9 am on Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, 2004. Why? Perhaps not the reasons you would expect....

Jeff, my husband, is a deal-getter. He researches, evaluates and compares products online prior to making any purchase, be it a fancy Motorola cell phone or a simple memory card. And this year, we both benefited from his type-A-ness.

As always, I (also a deal getter) wanted to take advantage of some of the Thanksgiving deals in the newspaper on Black Friday (like everyone else in the US). This, however, requires waking up at 5:00 am...ahhh the joys of the holidays. When I asked Jeff if he was ready to wake up early, to my surprise, he said, "I may not have to." This was quite out of character for Jeff, you see, because he is an electronics freak. He has to have the latest and greatest, fastest and thinnest models of whatever. This usually mandates Jeff join me at 5:00 am, not to Kohl's or Sears, but Best Buy and CompUSA.

Jeff explained that two things were happening online that night....1) Two major deal sites (FatWallet and BF2004) were distributing information, as they have come to be known/sued for, on both retail and online discounts and specials, 2) His electronic stores were encouraging shopping at home on Black Friday by offering discounts (if not lower, the same) beginning at 1 am, often with free shipping. His shopping process was streamlined, organized and mayhem free! He would not join me in the ravages of the 2 hour waiting lines and frenzy of competing shoppers.... he was done.

I came to realize that the Internet has revolutionized Black Friday for some people. If your Black Friday isn't at least easier because of the world wide web, it should for sure be more organized because of the information you have available.

Take Borders for instance. One of Borders' sites, http://www.bordersstores.com/, gives customers the opportunity to reserve an item online and pick it up at a store. A computer program takes inventory information from stores and loads it on the Web site. Meanwhile, the consumers can still be met with all the point of purchase products that they would have had they gone to the store on Black Friday.

Perhaps more online stores need to capitalize on this infiltration. We're talking less overhead (in terms of personnel and utilities), less supply chain/inventory issues, and probably less customer dissatisfaction. Clearly, some of the benefits of the "loss leader" will be diminished online, but with new checkout techniques, like the upsell, "you may also like", basket bundling, "may we suggest"-type pitches, it's possible to capture the additional sales from consumers by letting your website work for you.

Granted, I still showed up at Kohl's this morning at 6:00 am for my diamond earrings at $50, but that's because I wanted to see the product. For items that don't require discrimination, I stuck to the web and minimized my exposure to the masses. And honestly, I watched at least 25 people at the jewelry counter walk off in frustration.

A ComputerWorld article indicates, "The share of Internet traffic going to shopping sites already has surpassed last year's high, set on Thanksgiving Day, according to Internet traffic monitoring company Hitwise Pty. Ltd."

According to a National Retail Federation shopper survey, 38 percent of shoppers say they will buy holiday items online. Another survey conducted by the retail federation shows that more shoppers plan to browse and comparison shop online this year compared to last.