Taking a peek at the new retail calendar

Will it be a hap­py Christ­mas for UK retail­ers? After the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic squeez­ing the life out of the high street, they cer­tain­ly deserve some cheer. Data shows their for­tunes could be res­ur­rect­ed by ecom­merce. But giv­en the shift to online, and the evo­lu­tion of shop­ping habits, what does it mean for the tra­di­tion­al retail cal­en­dar?

New data from Adobe indi­cates activ­i­ty around key retail dates will begin ear­li­er, and peak retail occa­sions will be high­er and more pro­longed. Accord­ing to the soft­ware giant’s inter­na­tion­al pres­i­dent Paul Rob­son, online hol­i­day sales will “shat­ter all pre­vi­ous records”.

This is sup­port­ed by Adobe’s pro­jec­tions that, in Amer­i­ca alone, Black Fri­day will gen­er­ate $10 bil­lion (£7.5 bil­lion) in online sales. “That’s a 39 per cent year-on-year increase,” says Rob­son. “Cyber Mon­day will remain the biggest online shop­ping day of the year,” he con­tin­ues, adding that $12.7 bil­lion (£9.6 bil­lion) is expect­ed to be spent in the Unit­ed States, up 35 per cent on last year.

Rob­son says: “Our research into the online shop­ping habits of UK con­sumers dur­ing lock­down found that while they were up to four times more like­ly to buy from mar­ket­places like Ama­zon, it’s not always at the expense of small­er inde­pen­dent retail­ers. Where mar­ket­places may have the edge when it comes to con­ve­nience and speed, shop­pers have also shown they are keen to sup­port local, inde­pen­dent retail­ers where they can.

“The extend­ed shop­ping peri­od, cou­pled with the abil­i­ty of inde­pen­dent retail­ers to deliv­er great, per­son­alised dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences, could see them have a hap­pi­er Christ­mas peri­od than many might expect.”

Looking beyond traditional retail peaks

Google data also implies the retail cal­en­dar needs updat­ing. “As a direct result of COVID-19, we have wit­nessed height­ened search queries for online retail this year that will lead to a new base­line for Black Fri­day,” says Becky Pow­er, direc­tor of con­sumer retail and tech­nol­o­gy at Google UK. “Google search­es for ‘ear­ly Black Fri­day deals’ were up by 150 per cent ver­sus Novem­ber 2019.” Fur­ther, Google search­es for “Christ­mas shop­ping” are up 1,800 per cent com­pared to the same peri­od last year.

“The mes­sage is clear: con­sumers are look­ing beyond tra­di­tion­al peaks in the retail cal­en­dar as they con­tin­ue to enjoy the flex­i­bil­i­ty of brows­ing online,” says Pow­er, who points out that Enders research esti­mates there will be an addi­tion­al £4.5 bil­lion-worth of online sales in 2020.

Retail own­ers must keep pace with cus­tomer expec­ta­tions and arm them­selves with tech­nol­o­gy that enables mul­ti-chan­nel per­son­al­i­sa­tion and improves data analy­sis. “Giv­en that a con­tin­u­al­ly grow­ing num­ber of con­sumers are already shop­ping online for tra­di­tion­al peaks, retail­ers will have to adapt to be ready for this rise in demand,” says Pow­er. “Dig­i­tal tools are imper­a­tive for apply­ing prod­uct pro­mo­tions eas­i­ly and quick­ly, boost­ing retail­ers’ vis­i­bil­i­ty to new cus­tomers, and can uncov­er mean­ing­ful insights from their per­for­mance.”

Kyle Harbin­son, of glob­al tech­nol­o­gy con­sul­tants REPL Group, agrees. “To reduce the impact of the troughs, retail­ers need to con­nect with and under­stand the cir­cum­stances of their cus­tomers, in a dynam­i­cal­ly chang­ing envi­ron­ment,” the con­sult­ing part­ner says. “We are in unchart­ed ter­ri­to­ry, so retail­ers need to piv­ot from instinct-dri­ven deci­sion-mak­ing to a data-dri­ven cul­ture.”

Taking steps to bolster the online offering

Warn­ings are being heed­ed. Capgemini’s annu­al Hol­i­day Shop­ping Sur­vey reports that while more than a third (36 per cent) of UK retail­ers expect an increase in hol­i­day sales com­pared to pre­vi­ous years, 91 per cent have tak­en delib­er­ate steps to bol­ster their online offer­ing. Almost half (47 per cent) have improved their ecom­merce propo­si­tions and 52 per cent will offer more gen­er­ous dis­counts both online and in-store.

The ben­e­fit ecom­merce brings allows you to cre­ate and build your own peak retail event

How­ev­er, Dr Rajesh Bhar­gave, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of mar­ket­ing at Impe­r­i­al Col­lege Busi­ness School, cau­tions that one issue retail­ers will face post-COVID-19 is the dilem­ma of “sticky prices”. “Con­sumers tend to remem­ber what they would have paid pre­vi­ous­ly for a prod­uct, so would view price increas­es as unjust in poor eco­nom­ic con­di­tions,” he says. “Sim­i­lar­ly, cut­ting prices would erode pric­ing pow­er.”

No retail­ers should be dis­cour­aged from embrac­ing ecom­merce, how­ev­er, stress­es author and busi­ness con­sul­tant Eri­ca Wolfe-Mur­ray. “The hype sur­round­ing tra­di­tion­al retail peak days has a halo effect across the board whether you are active­ly mar­ket­ing or not,” she says. “But the ben­e­fit ecom­merce brings allows you to cre­ate and build your own peak retail event. Think ‘Founder’s Day’, ‘Dress-Up Day’, or what­ev­er.”

Embracing technology is business-critical

Tech­nol­o­gy can also help with the mor­ph­ing of tra­di­tion­al peak retail peri­ods, from deal­ing with stock man­age­ment and the sup­ply chain, to pre­dict­ing when more staff might be required. Or with improv­ing the deliv­ery process, posits Mike Han­cox, chief exec­u­tive of UK couri­ers Yodel. “The five months stretch­ing from Novem­ber to the end of March have long been the busiest peri­od for those in logis­tics as they encom­pass retail’s tra­di­tion­al peaks of Black Fri­day, Christ­mas, Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day,” he says.

“This year we’re expect­ing Christ­mas to be high­er in inten­si­ty and longer in dura­tion than pre­vi­ous years, but a greater increase in over­all vol­umes means the fluc­tu­a­tions seen in pre­vi­ous years could be less pro­nounced in the future.”

Yodel has devel­oped a par­cel-scan­ning app to stream­line the deliv­ery process. “It gives more flex­i­bil­i­ty to the grow­ing num­bers of self-employed couri­ers out on the road who can down­load the app on their own devices rather than hav­ing to get up to speed with a hand­held ter­mi­nal.”

Striv­ing to reduce touch­points and fric­tions through tech is now busi­ness crit­i­cal, argues Pro­fes­sor Lau­rent Muzel­lec, founder and direc­tor of Trin­i­ty Cen­tre for Dig­i­tal Busi­ness. “Big dig­i­tal play­ers such as Net­flix, Ama­zon and Apple use arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to pro­duce an effort­less expe­ri­ence; this should be a source of inspi­ra­tion for all retail­ers,” he says.

Retail­ers that act on this advice and tai­lor their offer­ings, both online and offline, look set to have a hap­py Christ­mas and beyond.

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