Black Friday - friend or foe?

The noise around Black Friday (28^th November) is greater than ever this year and we understand that the big retailers are poised to fight for their share of the promotional spend just weeks before Christmas. Indeed, hot on the heels of Black Friday is Sofa Sunday and Cyber Monday! Is this all a great idea and how useful is it for confectionery retailers?

A recent piece of research from Verdict (October 2014) suggests that 47% of shoppers intend to purchase a promotion on Black Friday. This is certainly skewed towards the younger shopper with 56% of 15-24 year olds having that intention, 59% of 25-34 year olds and just 28% of those over 65 years.

The idea has come from the USA and seems set to stay on British soil, growing in impact year after year. Synics point out that retailers are simply eroding their margins by promoting at a time when sales are high anyway (Verdict Research states that £90.7bn is set to be spent on Christmas related items this year, up 2.6% from 2013). The problem is, when your competitor jumps in with a Black Friday promotion, you feel compelled to swiftly follow.

Love it or loathe it, Black Friday is here to stay. Is it relevant to confectionery retailers? Well the confectionery retail market is certainly much more fragmented and so it probably depends on your route to market (high street or online) and your customer profile. It is likely that there will be more noise online where a younger audience might be busier and competition is more widespread. If you feel like you’ve missed out on Black Friday, how about Cyber Monday instead?! For high street and local retailers, try to understand what is happening on a local level. You might want to steal the march and use it as a promotional event to get feet through the door or you might prefer to focus on keeping your margins intact and working as hard as possible on your customer service.

However you decide to react to Black Friday, be sure to see some silly deals on offer as the country winds up for the Christmas frenzy.

www.sweetretailing.co.uk

Rising online confectionery sales

Some figures were recently reported that suggested more than £100m of confectionery sales are now done online. This has apparently grown by 28.4% in the last year and accounts for 3% of all confectionery sales in the UK. Is this a trend that we should take especially seriously? Well, extrapolate that growth rate and it’s not unreasonable to suggest that within the next five to six years, at least 9% of all confectionery sales could be done online. That’s serious!

Research suggests that there is a decline in on-the-go confectionery sales whilst purchases for home consumption are firmly on the up. Less a case of filling up on confectionery during the day but more indulging in our sweet treats in the safety of our own home when we are relaxing with friends and family – or alone perhaps. Shoppers are buying more planned confectionery with their main shop too.

This has big implications for product formats in both retail stores and online shops. Perhaps offering sharing products for home consumption to buy online is the winning formula?!

The fact that we all love our confectionery is not going to diminish to my mind, even if it is not the healthiest thing around – we need some pleasures! But it does look like how we buy it and where and when we prefer to consume it could change over time. The savvy retailer will surely keep a close eye on this so that they can move their range (and sales format) on in time with the changing trends.

www.sweetretailing.co.uk

Do your customers engage?

We are spotting more and more retailers embrace Twitter for the first time – even the smallest; working to build up a small community of their own to engage with. It’s free and for many, can be very effective indeed.

Smaller retailers can use the likes of Twitter and Facebook to talk with their local customers, getting feedback from time to time and communicating offers and special events when need be.

It certainly cannot harm any confectionery retailer to have a go and build a “community” over time! Of course, you will generally reach out to your most proactive and loyal customers in the main. Those that seek you out on social networks or take action having read that you are there to talk to. So to my mind, social networks can be a great tool for confectionery retailers to engage with their best customers and keep them close.

So how can you engage with the more infrequent customers that you welcome through your doors? Many might pop in just a few times a year when the need arises. Well maybe a need might arise in the run up to Christmas and you could use that to your advantage!

As well as going to town on your product range at Christmas time, it’s a great opportunity to recruit some more customers to engage with beyond the festive season. Think about advertising a weekly giveaway on Twitter or Facebook in your store. Perhaps you supply an exclusive discount code via Facebook every Friday. You could develop a social media promotion whereby every friend on Facebook gets entered into a prize draw to win something rather big.

There are lots of ways to encourage your customers, regular and infrequent, to sign up to your social media and there is no better time than when you might be a bit busier. Use your store, counter and bags to communicate the benefits and look forward to engaging with more customers socially during 2014.

www.sweetretailing.co.uk

A point of difference?

I think that the objective of any UK confectionery retailer is to maximise their sales and stand out against the competition so that they have a point of difference. Nothing new there then.

It has always been said that price is only ever a short term point of difference – someone can always be cheaper. How true. But what about your product range?

A recent hot topic is American confectionery. Considered a niche sector of the UK confectionery market, American sweets and chocolates have really taken the market by storm in the last 12 to 24 months. More UK retailers and wholesalers have sprung up, dedicated to this profitable and different confectionery category whilst many confectionery retailers have been and continue to enjoy strong sales of these different and fun treats.

But what happens when the supermarkets get wind of it? We are about to find out. Asda has already leapt headlong into American confectionery, firstly with Hershey’s and Reese’s over a year ago and now with American Confectionery bays in 100 stores. It was revealed in The Grocer (4 August) that Tesco is to trial an American fixture in 10 of its stores. The range will include Hershey’s chocolate.

So is this the end of the advantage that smaller confectionery stores and retailers have on American confectionery or can they still use the category as a point of difference and benefit from the strong sales that exist? I guess that only time can tell and it certainly demonstrates the importance of keeping a close eye on the quality and uniqueness of your product range. It doesn't all have to been remarkably different of course, but you will want to be assured of those sectors and ranges that are.

Maximising the potential of any advantage that you have has never been so important. Smaller retailers are certainly able to do this, given that they can really get to understand their local shopper profile and what they want to buy from them. This is where they can truly stand apart, carving out a local position for themselves regardless of what the larger stores are up to. It never hurts to understand what’s going on behind your back though.

www.sweetretailing.co.uk

Rain makes customers grumpy

We are all getting fed up with it and none of us can do anything about it. The rain continues, ignoring the fact that our water table is full to the brim. Online feedback forum, Feefo, has recently revealed that the poor weather directly affects retailers in more ways than we think, with a greater amount of negative feedback being posted. Can there really be a link?

Feefo manages online feedback for all manner of UK retailers including Fat Face and The White Company, facilitating more than 1,000 reviews and ratings on a daily basis. From early June, the company noticed a significant uplift in the number of negative comments that their clients were receiving.

So confectionery retailers watch out! We are far more likely to take it out on the shops that we visit at the moment, as our spirits are dampened, not knowing whether summer is actually going to take place this year.

On the positive side of things, we know that confectionery has become a leading “pick me up” during the difficult economy and so perhaps it can reward your shoppers in the same way when the downpours show no sign of shifting? Perhaps you could actually turn it to your advantage, offering a special deal on every day that it rains? Downpour Deals! You heard it here first…

www.sweetretailing.co.uk