Retailers prepping for Black Friday

The pandemic and its economic fallout are going to make it exceedingly difficult for retailers to have a merry Christmas. The industry is expected to see an uptick in seasonal sales of a measly 1% to 1.5%, according to a forecast released by Deloitte, which would be well below the 4.1% increase the industry recorded last year.
New shopping patterns that are a reaction to Covid-19 have rendered retailers’ old holiday playbooks useless. Big names such as Walmart Inc and Best Buy Co have already acknowledged as much by announcing
that they will close their brick-and-mortar stores on Thanksgiving, the day that has served as the kickoff for Black Friday deals for the last decade or so. Macy’s Inc, which aims to whip up seasonal cheer with its annual Thanksgiving Day Parade, has announced the festivities will be reworked for a mostly television audience.
The essence of the big chains’ challenge is this: Given pandemic-related health concerns, they need to figure out how keep
their stores from getting crowded — on Black Friday, especially, but also on weekends and other busy days — without sacrificing too many potential sales. Here are my ideas for retailers to have a safe, socially distanced Black Friday and holiday season:
More online-only deals: A year ago, I would have said offering online-only deals was retail malpractice. Customers — particularly a store’s most loyal ones — often shop that brand both in-person and online. They might notice price differences and feel they had gotten a raw deal. For the most part, retailers should still maintain price consistency across channels on most of their merchandise, but for some products that are big draws on Black Friday they could make some of the so-called doorbuster discounts available only to online shoppers. If retailers make it known in Black Friday ads and circulars that the best savings are going to be online, they might succeed in thinning the crowds that day at their brick-and-mortar locations.

—Bloomberg