Each year, it’s neat to do a review of the holidays from the previous year so you can see the developing trends and predict how they’ll develop for this year and next. While it’s not 100% that a trajectory will continue in the same vein as last year, trends and patterns usually take a few years to be made or broken and so, a year is a fairly good indicator of what the next one will be like. RepricerExpress has gone through the data and presents some points on what this Amazon holiday shopping season — and possibly next — will be like.
More Purchases are Being Made on Smaller and Smaller Devices
Holidays then: If you think back to the holiday season of a decade or so ago, when the internet was still very much in its infancy and only Steve Jobs had a smartphone, the shopping landscape looked pretty different. Buying was done almost exclusively in brick-and-mortar stores, with the exception of ordering from catalogues or hampers. Either way, a phone and cash register were pretty much the only tech devices being used in purchases.
Holidays now: The internet is so commonly used in holiday purchasing (all one needs to do is look at how Amazon sales spike each year around the holidays for proof) that saying it plays a big role in shopping is about as redundant as saying cars come with ABS brakes; everyone knows.
What’s surprising is how much more individualistic it’s becoming. Instead of picturing people sitting at home in front of their desktops, clicking their way through shopping lists, they’re doing it on the go with smartphones and tablets. In fact, holiday purchases made on a mobile device soared 50% last year, compared to just 20% the year before. In total, about one in three people will buy something for the holidays on a mobile device, which marks an absolutely astronomical increase.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are Two Incredibly Profitable Days
Holidays then: Just like the internet being used more and more in holiday shopping, it’s of little surprise that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are two of America’s biggest holiday shopping days of the year.
Holidays now: Black Friday and Cyber Monday have gotten even stronger, but there are two four-day periods in the first half of December that are quickly catching up. You’ve got the semi-early shoppers finishing off their buying lists from 1-4 December (they accounted for 9% of all holiday sales in 2012) and the almost-last-minute shoppers from 10-13 December (they accounted for 8.5% in 2012).
And how much do Black Friday and Cyber Monday total in holiday shopping sales? 8.6%
Amazon Owns a Huge Piece of the Holiday Pie
Holidays then: A generation ago, Amazon was just a twinkle in Jeff Bezos’s eye. It started in 1994, making this year its 20th anniversary, but a generation is roughly 30 or so years and so Amazon didn’t even figure into holiday shopping at all.
Holidays now: The way in which Amazon has sunk its teeth into holiday shopping is astounding, so let’s take a look at some of the statistics.
- In a one-week period in December 2013, Amazon netted more than a million new Amazon Prime users.
- Every single second on Cyber Monday in 2013, Amazon sold 426 items. That works out to an average of 25,560 products per minute, 1.5 million per hour and for the entire day — well, our calculator ran out of room for all the zeros (it’s 36.8 million, according to Amazon).
- The shopper leaving things to the very last second managed to get their package delivered just in the nick of time: a Plantronics Audio headset took just three-and-a-half hours to reach its destination, arriving on Christmas Eve day.
- Xbox One and PlayStation 4s were incredibly popular, reaching a peak selling rate of 1,000/minute
- Apparently, Himalayan Crystal lamps were also really popular, with Amazon buyers scooping them in large enough numbers that, stacked one on top of another, they would have been the 4,000th-and-something being to have summited Mount Everest.
- Although Amazon refused to release exact numbers of just how many more Kindles they sold last year for the holidays, the Kindle Fire HD, Kindle Fire HDX7” and Kindle Fire HDX8.9” were the top three sellers on Amazon.com
- There’s possibly no accounting for taste, as Lady Gaga, Kelly Clarkson and Eminem had the three top-selling albums on Amazon.com, with Lorde joining them if you take into consideration MP3s.
- While Amazon.com shoppers may not be terribly sophisticated in their music tastes, they have excellent taste in movies, with Despicable Me 2 one of the top three DVDs sold.
Christmas is about one month away now and it’s time to bear down and get ready for the rush. While you fine-tune your plan for handling the load this holiday season on Amazon, let RepricerExpress take care of keeping your prices competitive and your share of Buy Boxes high. Sign up for your 15-day free trial and give yourself the early gift of one less thing to worry about.
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