JOAN MULLER: Will Black Friday be a muted or monumental affair?
To get constrained consumers to open their wallets, retailers will have to offer much deeper discounts than the usual ‘20% off’ scenario
Retailers around the world, including in SA, are no doubt betting on Covid-weary consumers to go big on next week’s Black Friday sales. We can certainly all do with a spot of early Christmas retail therapy. Black Friday promotions may well go a long way to help battered brands recover the losses recorded during the months of brick-and-mortar store shutdowns.
Last week’s Alibaba Singles’ Day online shopping blitz underscores just how quickly the Chinese have regained their propensity for bargain hunting. The Chinese tech conglomerate raked in a record-breaking $75bn in sales, 26% up on its 2019 Singles’ Day earnings. In this CNN Business report (https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/10/tech/singles-day-2020-alibaba-intl-hnk/index.html), Xiaofeng Wang, an analyst with market research firm Forrester, says Chinese consumers’ purchase behaviour has returned to pre-pandemic levels, if not higher. China reported positive economic growth for the second quarter in a row last month, underlini...
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