Amazon Black Friday is over! Will it be the coolest Black Friday in history?

Yesterday we talked about some of the early performances after Black Friday began, which were generally not ideal. Black Friday will officially end after this afternoon. Let's take a look at the local evening sales. Whether this year's Amazon Black Friday event will be a hit depends on the performance during this period.

According to feedback from sellers everywhere this year, the situation is generally quite cold. Most order volumes are the same as usual or slightly more, and there is no feeling of a big promotion at all. Even if sufficient discounts are given as required by Amazon, the products can only remain the same.

There are cases of explosive orders, but they are less than in previous years, and the magnitude is not as large as in previous years. In short, it is a cold one from top to bottom. Has Amazon really reached a traffic bottleneck?

While everyone feels that things are going cold, foreign media have actually analyzed the recent consumption data provided by credit card institutions such as MasterCard and Visa and found that the sales of the entire Black Friday are actually higher than last year and the year before. As of the evening of Black Friday, the retail sales of the entire Black Friday week increased by 29.8% month-on- month. However, a very special phenomenon has emerged this year. These sales have been largely dispersed throughout the year-end shopping season, and the sales on Black Friday are not as high as in previous years.

This phenomenon can be attributed to the stay-at-home order during the pandemic last year, which restricted people from gathering in offline supermarkets in large numbers. Major retailers were forced to shift more sales online and hold various "Black Friday same price" events before Black Friday to maximize sales. Obviously, this shopping habit has been brought over this year. Although there is no stay-at-home order this year, people are still maintaining last year's shopping habits and buying things at home in advance for the sake of epidemic safety.

Not only are online sales unsatisfactory, but even the offline supermarkets that were most popular during Black Friday have gone silent this year.

In the Bay Area of ​​California, on Black Friday, which should have been the hottest and busiest time of the year, many stores were sparsely populated and there were almost no queues.

During the Black Friday period in previous years, the Best Buy in Pleasant Hill was surrounded by lines of people waiting for the store to open and rush in to buy. But this year, there were only about 30 shoppers waiting for Best Buy to open, and there was no momentum to rush in to buy in the past.

Not only are consumer habits and concepts beginning to change, but the US economic situation and consumer expectations are also deeply affecting this year's Black Friday sales. According to foreign media research, because of the continued substantial inflation in the US, prices have risen across the board, and consumers have to invest more household funds in necessities such as food, clothing, housing and transportation , which will seriously affect the sales performance of other consumer goods during Black Friday.

Moreover, consumers are generally not optimistic about the discounts on Black Friday this year. One consumer interviewed said that a TV that he liked this year was on sale at $499 on Amazon on Black Friday, and the price before the discount was $800, which saved him more than $300. But in fact, if you check the historical prices, you will find that this TV has never been sold for $800. In fact, the most expensive time was last month on Black Friday, when it was sold for $560, which is only $60 cheaper than the Black Friday price , which is completely incomparable to the discounts in previous years.

Money is tight and expectations for online Black Friday discounts are low. This double blow has resulted in a rather unsatisfactory performance for this year's Black Friday. However, the data above also shows that the total sales during the entire Black Friday period were still quite impressive, but the effect on the day was diluted. We also need to combine the data of Cyber ​​Monday to see the situation of the entire peak season. I will continue to keep an eye on the data of Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday for everyone.