Judging by some eye-opening numbers from last month’s Black Friday, global retailers hold a massive opportunity to engage with more customers than ever before.
Why?
A new study from Ingenico Group bodes well for global retailers and their pursuit of new customers this holiday season and beyond because online spending by European consumers on Black Friday soared 509 percent compared to the average Friday in 2017.
Compared against U.S. consumer spending data, this increase among European consumers was more than three times higher than the growth of U.S. online spending during the same time period. The surge in European spending indicates that the success of Black Friday has spread overseas, representing an opportunity for U.S.-based online retailers to identify and attract new customers during the holiday shopping season and, perhaps, beyond that.
According to some pundits, they thought Black Friday had lost its luster, only serving to perpetuate a brand’s disconnect with what individual consumers want and need.
According to analysis of U.S. transactions processed by Ingenico from Nov. 24-27, online spending was relatively comparable throughout the long weekend, with the total sales on Cyber Monday only exceeding Black Friday by a small margin. Ingenico also reported that the number of transactions on Black Friday and Cyber Monday rose 105 percent and 143 percent, respectively, compared to the average of all the transactions recorded on each corresponding weekday in 2017.
Although the difference was not as dramatic as previous years, Ingenico found that Cyber Monday claimed a larger number of online transactions than Black Friday, and as a result, consumers spent more on that day.
“Even though the increases in consumer spending across Black Friday and Cyber Monday were not as dramatic in the U.S. as previous years, the record amount of growth across Europe in 2017 is encouraging for global merchants,” said Joe Leija, General Manager ePayments, North America, at Ingenico Group. “It is important to look closely at this information because it offers a direct line of sight into global consumer shopping behaviors and preferences. As online commerce continues to drive retail forward, Ingenico is proud to offer solutions that enable merchants to meet the demands of the holiday shopping season anytime, anywhere.”
These statistics are based on Ingenico’s online retail data for 2017 collected from January to November.