I had the chance to witness Black Friday, Boxing Day and many other special shopping holidays and I was fascinated. Long queues, a surprising patience, and some pretty crazy chaos as well. On one hand, for retailers as well as for customers these are huge sales opportunities. On the other hand, they are a lot of pressure. Excited, confused and frustrated, a number of shoppers exhibit an aggressive and potentially dangerous behavior.
Online as well as in real world, retailers offer a day or a season of profitable deals and significant discounts on a variety of consumer products. The shops opening hours are longer than usual. For Certain retailers, these days represent the make-it-or-break-it period, mainly those who did not manage to realize the expected or desired performance to plan results in their goods or services budget plans before the shopping holiday’s season. In other words, retailers that operated in red during the whole year, rely highly on these exceptional days to end the year with a profit.
Even though these exceptional dates find their origins in the US, The figures show that they are very profitable in Europe as well and it is fair to say that these events acquired strong European identity. Thus, the holidays shopping periods uncovers many facets related to the consumer behavior and it deserves a closer inspection.
Online as well as in real world, retailers offer a day or a season of profitable deals and significant discounts on a variety of consumer products. The shops opening hours are longer than usual. For Certain retailers, these days represent the make-it-or-break-it period, mainly those who did not manage to realize the expected or desired performance to plan results in their goods or services budget plans before the shopping holiday’s season. In other words, retailers that operated in red during the whole year, rely highly on these exceptional days to end the year with a profit.
For consumers, these events are at the same time exciting and confusing, similar to a "star wars" movie, curious, people will want to know whether the deals are really what they are looking for or not. With the hype preceding these events, customers are bombarded with a large range of choices that can make them indecisive. Pressured because of the new retail environment that is usually changed especially for these shopping holidays, fear of missing out a deal take place. As a result frustration and aggression might be stimulated.
The media usually outline and show photos and videos of aggressive consumer behaviors in black Friday for instance, but never discussed or highlighted the reasons standing behind such behaviors. The shopping holidays including "Black Friday" and "Boxing day" are known for the long queues, standing in cold weather waiting outdoors, the stores can get heavily crowded with poor customer service, a limited number of discounted products and again long queues to check out. It is possible to deduct that aggressive behavior can be a result of frustration that occurs when the employed efforts to reach the desired outcomes or goals are blocked.
Aggressive consumer behavior attracted a lot of attention the previous years and as this behavior can be expected the next coming one, retailers need to train their personnel for such events and inform them clearly about the size of the merchandise available, its location and any occasional procedure proper to these periods. They need to educate everyone including the outsourced personnel about the coupons and promotions available and ensure correct labeling. Teach them how to deal with the negative emotions and aggressive behavior in order to avoid chaos and encourage friendly approaches
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