The Christmas sales in United States, Canada and UK
Christmas is a selling season for retailers in many nations around the world. Sales increase dramatically as people purchase decorations, gifts and supplies to celebrate.
United States:
In the U.S., the “Christmas shopping season” starts as early as October. Statistics show that a quarter of all personal spending takes place during the Christmas/holiday season. Figures from the “U.S. Census Bureau” show that department store sales nationwide rose 54 percent. The Christmas spending was increased more in other sectors. There was a buying surge of 100 percent in bookstores and 170 percent in jewelry stores. Same year employment in American retail stores went up from 1.6 million to 1.8 million in the two months prior to Christmas. Industries depend on Christmas include such as Christmas cards, of which 1.9 billion are sent in the United States each year. And live Christmas Trees, of which 20.8 million were cut in the U.S. in 2012.
Canada:
However, Canadians usually begin advertising campaigns after Halloween (October 31), and speed up the marketing after Remembrance Day on November 11. Stores would be open Christmas and New Year day until 7 or 8 pm. Boxing day is observed annually on December 26 in Canada, the U.K. and Commonwealth countries around the world. In the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, Boxing Day is primarily known as a shopping holiday, much like Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) in the United States. Boxing Day sales are very common in Canada. It is a time when shops hold sales often with dramatic price reductions. For many retailers, Boxing Day has become the day of the year with the greatest revenue.
UK and Commonwealth:
In the UK in 2009 it was estimated that up to 12 million shoppers appeared at the sales. The Christmas shopping season starts around the middle of November, around the time when street Christmas lights are turned on, In the UK and Ireland. In 2010, up to £7 billion spent online at Christmas, approximately a quarter of total retail festive sales.
For most of the Western countries, Christmas Day is the least active day of the year for business and commerce. Almost all retail, commercial and institutional businesses are closed, and almost all industries stop activity whether laws require such or not. In England and Wales, the Christmas Day “Trading Act 2004” prevents all large shops from selling on Christmas Day.
Also, film studios release many high-budget movies during the holiday season, including Christmas films, fantasy movies or with high production values to the hopes of getting Academy Awards.
Global Digital Buyers – Digital buyer penetration worldwide
This statistic gives information on the digital buyer penetration worldwide from 2011 to 2018. In 2013, 41.3 percent of global internet users had purchased products online. In 2017, this figure is expected to grow to 46.4 percent.
source from Statista
Sales organizations are struggling in the new digital world. Approaches that worked for decades are no longer effective. Ironically, the same digital technologies that have upended traditional sales can help forward-thinking companies effectively reinvent their sales management approaches.
With digital buyer penetration, internet users role worldwide in 2018 has increased 50%. However, the e-commerce industry is still set to evolve and expand.
In 2011, the number of digital buyers worldwide reached 792.6 million. More over, the number rose to 903.6 million and forecasters expect there will be 1.32 billion digital buyers across the globe in 2016.
One way of measuring the growth of the e-commerce industry is to analyze the purchase intention rates. Global average; online purchase intention rates of various product categories were calculated in the first quarter of 2011 and it can be compared with purchase intention rates from the first quarter of 2014. The comparison revealed that each product category experienced a growth in purchase intention. In the first quarter of 2014, 34 percent of respondents were planning to purchase an e-book online in the next six months. And, this figure represents a 19 percent growth from 2011. Also, event tickets experienced a 19 percent growth.
Amazon.com and eBay Inc. are two of the world’s largest e-retailers. Their success can be determined by looking at their year-on-year revenue growth from 2006 to 2013. Both companies have experienced fluctuating revenue growth during this time. In 2010, Amazon achieved a 40 percent year-over-year revenue growth, whereas eBay, in the same year only experienced a five percent year-over-year revenue growth.
8 E-commerce Pricing Strategy
E-commerce pricing strategy could be a hard deal there could be too many approaches. “Think simple, think positive” is a good starting point. Here are some pricing strategies (from shopify blog )
- Keystone Pricing – listing products for double what you paid at wholesale.
- Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) – what the manufacturer recommends you sell the product for.
- Multiple Pricing – essentially bundling with other products or accessories and selling them for one price.
- Discount Pricing – creating special offers for specific seasons, inventory, and sales initiatives
- Loss-leading Pricing – Marking down a product to compete against competitors in order to get people to buy additional products in the process.
- Psychological Pricing – using specific psychological tactics to persuade people to buy.
- Based on Competition – setting prices either above or below what competitors are listing similar products for.
- Anchor Pricing – Showing the original pricing along with the discounted rate in order to show potential buyers the savings they would benefit from if they buy from you at the discounted rate.
Before Choosing your Strategies you need to define ;
- What your are selling
- Who you are selling
- What customer needs ( could be different rather than price)
- How your customer comes to your store
- What you want to sell
- In some cases you have to choose a side between >> turnover vs profit
Dynamic Pricing in E-commerce – Timing and Competitor Price Tracking is the Key…
In e-commerce dynamic pricing could help you to increase your profits so what is dynamic pricing and what are the advantages of dynamic pricing in your E-commerce.
Dynamic pricing, also referred to as surge pricing, demand pricing, or time-based pricing is a pricing strategy in which businesses set flexible prices for products or service based on current market demands. Businesses are able to change prices based on algorithms that take into account competitor pricing, supply and demand, and other external factors in the market. Dynamic pricing is a common practice in several industries such as hospitality, travel, entertainment, retail, electricity, and public transport. Each industry takes a slightly different approach to repricing based on its needs and the demand for the product.
Timing and competitor price tracking is the key for dynamic pricing .For E-commerce businesses bellow 1 Mio USD turnover (annually) daily based timing could be enough. But you have to give response to daily price changes.
What are the Advantages of Dynamic Price Tracking
With Dynamic Pricing a company is much more flexible in offering the right price to the right customer, at the right time, for the right product. Examples of advantages of Dynamic Pricing are:
- Upselling: use low prices to attract customers, and sell additional high margin products and/or services
- Specific prices for targeted customer segments: e.g. different prices for households and businesses
- Specific prices for specific sales channels: e.g. different prices in online and offline retail
- Specific prices for specific periods: e.g. different prices at the weekend and weekdays
- Optimal discounting strategies: to make sure that all inventory is sold
This flexibility in offering prices allows companies to increase:
- Margins
- Revenues
- Market share
- Utilization
Dynamic pricing allows you to capture all three markets. Selling at a high price to those willing to pay it and capturing the entire market by also offering the same product at a discount price.
There is little public/scientific research available on the financial benefits of dynamic pricing. Several articles quote that Forester Research estimates that dynamic pricing may increase profits by 25%. However, the source of this claim cannot be found.
Popular E-commerce Platforms- Magento is still the industry leader
When it comes to starting an online store,there are many things to take into consideration. One of the most important part of this puzzle is which platform to use to power your e-commerce store.
As many know, Magento is an E-commerce platform built on open source technology. It provides online merchants with a flexible shopping cart system, as well as control over the look, content and functionality of their online store.
And, WooCommerce is a free E-commerce plugin that allows you to sell anything, beautifully. Built to integrate seamlessly with WordPress.
– research by aheadworks
As the chart shows Magenta and WooCommerce dominate 50 % of E-commerce the market.And why?
If you are a WordPress website owner/user and you would like to create your online store within it, it is logical that you would choose WooCommerce. It is simple to handle after you have got familiar with using WordPress and there are numerous video tutorials on the subject. At the same time, the basics of Magento can be quite easy.
It is a must for an E-commerce platform to be able to handle an infinite number of products and to feature a shopping cart. No problem, both systems can do these. It is also important, however, to what extent you can customize your product features and functions as well as the whole shopping process. And this makes Magento the winner in this respect.
WooCommerce can run on an average hosting service. A Magento-based E-commerce store needs to have the company’s own server or, even better, it is well worth the money to use a cloud based system.
Design is an important issue:
If it is not displayed perfectly on all devices, from smartphones to PCs, then you simply miss a significant part of your potential customers. WooCommerce can be integrated with WordPress without a hassle, thus responsiveness is usually not a problem. You can browse among a good number of themes, some are free, but most are paid themes. However, these are still cheaper than to hire front end and back end developers and graphic artists to create a custom design for every page with a Magento project.