Record-breaking cyber monday sales: Capgemini comment

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Adobe Analytics said Cyber Monday online sales would hit a record-breaking $9.4 billion in the US, climbing 18.9% from 2018. Adobe also found that Black Friday was a record breaker in terms of sales.  For the UK, it has been a similar story – with VoucherCodes predicting that the UK would spend £2.53bn on Black Friday, a 3.4% increase on 2018.

Kees Jacobs, Vice President, Global Consumer Products and Retail Sector at Capgemini, said: “Another record-setting Cyber Monday and Black Friday, with billions worth of sales done, confirms that the run up to the festive season shopping is critical to a retailer’s bottom line. With these two events marking the start of the spending spree and several more critical weeks to go, there are two key question retailers need to answer in order to attract shoppers in the run up to the big day. First, where are people spending their money, and second who are the types of shopper we need to win over and what do they want to see? 

“It’ll be the spending plans of younger consumers which offers hope to retailers this year - 40% are planning on spending more this year than last, compared to 28% on average however, retailers must adapt their strategy in order to win some much-needed wallet-share from this group – that’s according to our Capgemini 2019 Festive Shopping survey of over almost 7,000 shoppers in the UK, US, France, Germany and Spain. 

“Our research found that consumers still consider variety/range of stock available (34%) and convenience of an outlet’s location (21%) as the primary factors for choosing to shop with one retailer over another, when price is not a factor. We also found that retailers need a strong presence across online, offline and voice in order to compete - while online shopping edges out in-store (50% to 39%) for where consumers will spend the most money this season, it would be unwise for retailers to ignore almost 4 in 10 shoppers who head in-store. Winning over shoppers to voice-based technology comes down to creating simple, secure experiences, with an added bonus of unique discounts – especially for 18 – 24 year olds, where 33% would make them more likely to shop using voice assistants. ”