2020 Black Friday: A unifying event during the times of Covid-19

I am one of those people who doesn't spend much time shopping. However, since I have come to the US, Black Friday frenzy has amazed me unlike anything else. This year was completely different due to Covid-19. Some of my observations from the sidelines as a customer: 

Chaos Masterclass: Chaos has been brewing over the years on who starts Thanksgiving deal when. This year exacerbated it to the next level. So many variants of deals, days, time, it was extremely confusing. Looks like choosing the right time to launch a deal, advertising to the right people and selling at the right price point is going to be a more fierce battle. Also due to all this, Digital advertising spend is gonna increase even more drastically. A good news for many ad reliant businesses.

Stores as Experience Centers: Few Stores are still driving a lot of traffic despite Covid. Personally, I was surprised to see Electronics as a category having significant shoppers in store. Seems like the whole world is doubling the number of electronics. And doing so by visiting stores to choose the device and ordering online for most part. So the role of the store was more of a customer experience center. 

Finally, Stores are closed on Thanksgiving: Year over year, Retailers were criticized for keeping the stores open on Thanksgiving. Many played with hours on Thanksgiving. This year was a relief. All stores were closed on Thanksgiving and opened on friday morning. Even on friday mornings, it wasn't a mad rush like previous years. Hopefully stores can agree to remain close on thanksgiving.

Store Only vs Online Only Blockbusters: Typically store only blockbusters used to drive a lot of footfalls. Buyers used to queue hours outside to crack those deals. Within a matter of minutes and sometimes hours, blockbusters were sold out. This year stores had to avoid overcrowding. Most stores had limited in-store only blockbusters. We can call this as the year when online only blockbusters took over store-only blockbusters by a large margin. With significant impulse buying happening online, this could be the way forward. 

Black Friday a unifying event: While Electronics used to draw the most offers, things have completely changed. Now Black Friday has reached almost all categories from clothes, Furniture, subscription businesses to what not. It’s no more an Electronics centric event only. All the businesses are using this event as an opportunity to overcome Covid impact. In that sense, this year Black Friday was a unifying event to bring the deniers to its fold. 

Relevance of Cyber Monday or rather Irrelevance: Cyber Monday was started to encourage users to shop online. Now Most of the shoppers are already shopping online. The deals are available online days before CyberMonday. And there isn't any exclusivity and novelty left around Cyber Monday. In such a scenario, does it even make sense to continue with Cyber Monday or come up with something totally different? Maybe every day of a week with a different product category e.g. Furniture Fridays.

P.S.: I went to more than 30 in a period of 4 days of thanksgiving holidays. Well not to buy for sure but to achieve my daily walking target :-)