It’s official. When it comes to bargain hunting, Black Friday and Cyber Monday in New Zealand are bigger than Boxing Day. According to The Full Download 2020 research carried out by NZ Post, online sales for these global shopping events saw more online purchases than Boxing Day in 2019 and became the biggest online shopping event in New Zealand. In that year, Kiwi shoppers spent a staggering $6.1 billion in the month before Christmas, including $450 million in Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, about $250 million more than Boxing Day. That’s hundreds of millions of reasons for any online retailer to contact an eCommerce marketing specialist in NZ and make sure they’re better placed to grab their share of that shopping pie in the future. According to the experts, that pie will only get bigger.
NZ Post Chief Customer Officer Bryan Dobson is just one of them. He’s been quoted as saying:
“We’re expecting this growth in online shopping during Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales to continue to soar. Last year online shopping on Black Friday increased 27%, but this year COVID has completely changed the way Kiwis shop, with more New Zealanders shopping online than ever before”.
COVID has certainly changed everything, in the short term and in the way global consumers will shop in the years ahead. When New Zealand first moved into Alert Level 3 earlier in the year, online shopping increased by a whopping 105%. It’s no flash in the pan as online shopping has consistently remained about 30% above historical levels. Shopping events simply add huge spikes to those online retail figures but it’s fair to say that people will continue to do everyday shopping through the internet and that superior eCommerce marketing is required to capitalise on that golden opportunity.
It’s too early for 2020 Black Friday and Cyber Monday figures to have been released but NZ Post was planning to deliver about two million parcels in the week following the sales compared to almost 1.8 million parcels for the same period last year. As for the end-of-year gift-giving season in general, the organisation brought on three additional sites to manage surges in parcel volumes, 200 more courier vans, 185 extra flights, more than 1500 extra transport runs and 350 additional processing people to deliver Christmas presents.
All of these facts and figures hint at the lucrative prospects for online retailers in New Zealand. Shopping events like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, New Year, Easter and even Singles’ Day (a holiday celebrated in China on November 11 but now increasingly popular in New Zealand as well. On the day, unmarried people treat themselves to gifts making Singles’ Day the biggest online shopping day in the world) are the icing on the cake for online retailers. But the shift in shopping habits and an ever-tighter embrace of eCommerce means there are rewards every day for those who provide the best digital shopping experience.
