Darren Winters takes a look at the figures behind the Black Friday retail bonanza, which occurs one day after Thanksgiving Day and it marks the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. Retailers typically start the season with massive discounts on products of limited supply to get shoppers all riled up. Black Friday retail bonanza is a celebration of the American culture of consumption which impacts not only US retail but also to some extent the global economy.
Black Friday retail bonanza is a make or break for US retailers and it is keenly watched by economists and international investors. As Darren Winters explains, if the shopping season yields lackluster retail sales, then inventories will be high going into the new year, which also implies retail factory orders could be disappointing going forward. Moreover, if factory orders fall that will have an adverse impact on demand for factory inputs, such as commodities, energy, and labor.
Black Friday retail bonanza is when retailers give it their all with deep discounts and extended shopping hours for the brick and mortar stores. In recent years, e-commerce sites have begun offering discounts and free shipping on Black Friday, as well as created their own shopping holiday in Cyber Monday.
Here are some interesting statistics behind Black Friday retail bonanza, the world’s biggest shopping day
In 2018, Black Friday starts on Friday, November 23 and Cyber Monday’s online equivalent gets going on Monday 26, 2018.
Black Friday retail bonanza and Cyber Monday is when US retail sales move up a gear.
What is the size (sales revenue) of Black Friday retail bonanza?
Online revenue generated from Black Friday, since 2007 has increased by 341.95% to 2.36 billion USD.
Across the Atlantic in Europe, UK black Friday 2017 retail sales accelerated by 11.7% to 1.39 billion GBP. Over the English Channel to continental Europe, Black Friday retail bonanza has yet to take off.
Instead, last year’s Black Friday was marked by French, Italian and German workers going on strike over Amazon’s pay.
It is again further evidence of Europeans rejecting Americanism. However, South America and particularly China did see a sharp pick up in sales.China’s “black Friday” brought in 1.5 billion USD sales in the first three minutes!
But where Black Friday retail bonanza has triggered a boom in online sales is via mobile smartphone platform. Mobile dominates Blac Friday sales, smartphone users made up 63%.
How does Black Friday retail bonanza compare by gender?
Of Black Friday shoppers 50.4% are female, 45.1% are male and 4.5% tansgender.
Darren Winters explains that Black Friday retail bonanza could also impact short term capital flows into retail stocks which tends to spur on greater volatility in retail sector during busy shopping season. Speculators/traders will be trying to gauge the optimism/pessimism of retailers over their busiest period of the year and leverage up their positions to maximize profits.
So if a speculator/trader gets wind that Black Friday retail bonanza is going well for retailers then they take out short-term leveraged long positions in retail stocks. If retail sentiment is negative the traders will tend to leverage short positions.