A Black Friday Planning Guide for Buyers and Sellers

For many years, the United States has known the tradition of Black Friday. The Friday after Thanksgiving launches the start of the christmas shopping season every year in November. In 2010, Thanksgiving crossed the Atlantic and reached the United Kingdom. Britons didn’t notice the massive discounts back then, but that changed in 2013. A subsidiary of Walmart, the largest US retailer, called Asda began to splurge deals on all its products.

This led other retailers to follow the same pattern, to not miss out on their early holiday sales. Two years later, in 2015, total spending was £1,1 billion on this day alone. In the US, in 2016, 101.7 million people did their shopping on this Friday.

Recent shifts to online shopping has made planning for this shopping mayhem even trickier. People prefer to stay home to do their shopping online, but that also puts more pressure on online retailers. Is your shipping company capable of catering to the demand? Can your website handle heavy traffic?

Black Friday still expects millions of customers and billions of spending. And this will be hectic. Black Friday has caused many people to be arrested due to fights and injuries because of pushing around in the crowds, and even fatalities in the past.

Careful planning is therefore extremely important and for that reason, Market Inspector is here to help by giving tips on how to plan for the day. The following infographic contains a guide for both consumer and store owner on how to prepare for Black Friday in the month leading up to it.

Although 40% of shoppers have already started planning in October for their holiday purchases, the real effort has come down in the last month. Are you up to speed with all the demand? Did you double check that everything works as you need it to? Do you have enough staff? Use the guide below to make your planning easier!