Planning ahead for Black Friday, a.k.a Cyber Month? New feature for Inside Retail Australia on how to avoid the nightmares! Dr Jessica Pallant and I have been writing and talking a lot about retail's mega sales and the respective opportunities and challenges they present for retailers. From interview senior retail leaders we heard many brands only participate begrudgingly, and worry about the impact they have on margins and profitability. Yet even after sharing all these insights, we still saw may retailers (even some we talked to!) leaning into large site-wide sales. The impact was clear from Australian Bureau of Statistics data with a weak end to the year overall. So this year we're trying something different. With thanks to Heather McIlvaine and Tamera Francis, we've written a new feature proposing a few ways retailers should be thinking about these events, while there's still time to course-correct if needed. Our main suggestions: 1. Look at profit, not just top-line figures 📈 2. Think long term, not just the weekend 🔮 3. Offer value beyond price discounts 🤑 4. Have a strategy, and stick to it 🎯 I know Nathan Bush, Rob Godwin, Danny Phillips have shared a lot of views on this too. I've particularly found Carla Penn-Kahn's breakdowns of profitability really useful! Would love to hear other thoughts AND particularly any retailers who are looking at the big sales differently this year. The Lumery, part of Accenture Song RMIT University RMIT College of Business and Law
Carla Penn-Kahn
1mo
Thank you for the mention Dr Jason Pallant. I would recommend retailers consider what stock is included in the campaigns. They should be removing from the sale campaigns: 1. Core products that are everyday best sellers at full margin 2. Seasonal product that is low in stock and will sell through at full margin I recommend retails also consider: 1. Introducing stock especially for the discount driven periods to protect brand integrity of core ranges 2. How they are going to handle the increased demand to avoid being 2024's "Frank Green" and "White Fox" cases with customers slamming your brand
Jackson Mills
1mo
Dr Jason Pallant What if retailers gave cashback instead of discounts? Consumers prefer cashback as they feel discounts devalue the 'value' of a product.
Danny Phillips
1mo
Maybe if we got CMOs to all sign a public pledge to not participate in BFCM we could use the FOMO and ‘follow the pack’ mentality to our advantage.
Shanthi Murugan
1mo
Couldn’t agree more with this article. Number #3 is one many retailers seem to miss!
Marketing Pracademic | Top Retail Expert 2023-2024
1moAn interesting and potentially relevant insight just dropped in my inbox from Thomas McKinlay at Ariyh; price promotions work better for 'guilty pleasures' than products bought for functions. So perhaps there's a middle ground for retailers here if you HAVE to do a price discount, be selective on which categories to do it on? https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ariyh_scientific-research-12-experiments-activity-7198574319138942976-KEq4?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop