How to readjust your strategy for peak season

It’s no real surprise that footfall to bricks-and-mortar stores is predicted to return to lower levels than what was seen before the pandemic took hold. This varies from country to country, but the diminished experience offered in-store due to the safety measures that have been put in place, and consumer concerns for personal health putting a significant number of shoppers off venturing in-store.

In addition, lockdowns have encouraged consumers to re-think the shopping opportunities offered online. According to Forrester Research (2020), 50% of customers are shopping on digital channels for products they’ve never bought online before. Forrester Research also indicates that 90% of customers say their behaviors are different as they avoid physical stores, put discretionary shopping on hold, and buy exclusively online or as much as possible online. Clearly, the crisis has readjusted consumer purchasing habits beyond the short-term and now eCommerce is more important than ever to them.

• Customer spending is likely to be tighter so retailers may need to focus much more on providing unmissable value.
• Retailers may well be eager to attract shoppers with some really good bargains, but this may mean that profits will be very low for key events like Black Friday. This makes it really important that retailers get creative with how they sell through stock which is either seasonal in nature or has a high stock level.
• Good preparation is essential. Retailers need to make sure they have several plans in place ready to be activated when needed. Stores will be fighting for customers more than ever before so if your competitor has the same offer as you then you’ll need to differentiate quickly. These multiple promotional strategies should be designed so that they can leverage different discount values, bundling specific shopper segments, top-of-mind awareness, and so on.
• Retailers also need to narrow their lens on how they review online performance — speed and agility will be essential. It is recommended to look at behavioral data based on a far shorter timeframe as this will be a really important lever for managing sales. Don’t use the traditional longer timeframes for assessing sales data as this will push products that were popular pre-sale and won’t be reactive enough to capture spikes in interest. Set your lens to a more reactive date range, where you can apply the previous day’s sales data and push products that are popular and on promotion (For example, if you have a TV that costs £2,000 and doesn’t sell that frequently, but when in a 50% off promotion, it will sell really quickly. You’ll want to look at the last 1 day of sales for that item and not the last 30 days so it will be pushed up to the top of the results).