A new white paper from Retail Week, in association with ChannelAdvisor, reveals the need-to-know information about discount days.

Discount days are now part and parcel of the retail calendar, with Black Friday and Cyber Monday the biggest on our shores.

Since their inception in 2010, their popularity has snowballed and last year, combined sales for the two days reached £2bn.

But that figure is a drop in the ocean compared with Singles’ Day in China and El Buen Fin in Mexico.

The latter racked up sales worth £7.9bn in 2014. The former – held on November 11 annually – was hijacked by etail giant Alibaba in 2009. It has been worth it: last year the etailer sold goods worth £9.9bn in the first 90 minutes.

“Since Black Friday and Cyber Monday’s inception in 2010, combined sales for the two days reached £2bn”

Given the staggering figures resulting from these online shopping days, Retail Week has teamed up with ChannelAdvisor to launch a new white paper, revealing just what makes such events successful and what lessons UK retailers can learn from them.

Read on for a teaser from the paper: four international days every retailer should know about. To download the full white paper, visit Retail-week.com/discount-days

El buen fin

El buen fin

El Buen Fin

  • Date: November 18–21 (2016)
  • Sales: £7.9bn (up 13.7% year on  year) in 2014
  • Consider: Black Friday is no longer just a gringo thing

Conceived in 2011, ‘The Good Weekend’ is a government and industry partnership to help stimulate the economy post-recession. It is timed to take advantage of Mexico’s Revolution Day weekend.

A survey by Deloitte in 2014 showed that 74% of Mexicans made purchases over the mid-November weekend.

What is more, the event didn’t appear to cannibalise Christmas sales – 80% planned to buy more goods in December.

Campaigners point to the increasing numbers of shoppers buying on credit.

There are also those that say the discounts aren’t good enough.

To this, the national retailers’ association (Antad) has a straightforward rebuttal: “If I want to buy a flat-screen TV and don’t care about having the very latest fashion, I can get one that’s a step behind at a very low price.”

Small Business Saturday

Small Business Saturday

Small Business Saturday

  • Date: December 3 (2016)
  • Sales: £623m in 2015
  • Consider: 94% of SMEs have never provided any kind of promotion or discount on Black Friday

Small Business Saturday is no Black Friday, nor is it intended to be.

The former encourages consumers to swap their shop from a large firm to a small, independent one, while the latter is dominated by retail behemoths pushing breakthrough prices on everything from tablets to washing machines.

But there are similarities between the two. Both are US imports (Small Business Saturday was launched by American Express) and both are proving popular with consumers.

Shoppers spent £504m at the 2014 event, up 8% on the first in 2013. In 2015 it was £623m and #SmallBusinessSaturday trended on Twitter, according to American Express.

Total reach topped 25 million people. The figures indicate growing interest in supporting local business.

It also gives small operators a chance as many struggle with discount days.

Green Monday logo

Green Monday logo

Green Monday

  • Date: December 12 (2016)
  • Consider: The better fulfilment services become, the bigger Green Monday will be

Green Monday has nothing to do with climate change and everything to do with Christmas.

The term was first coined by eBay in 2009 to describe its best sales day in December.

More specifically, it’s been defined as the Monday that falls with at least 10 days to go until Christmas.

In the US it’s now the third biggest day for online spend. Why? Because shoppers have become more confident that retailers will be able to get their online purchases to them in time for the big day.

Some retailers have started labelling it Cyber Monday 2 but, in terms of sales volumes, Cyber Monday had better watch out, because Green Monday could soon be number one.

free shipping day logo

free shipping day logo

Free shipping Day

  • Date: December 18 (2016)
  • Consider: As retailers improve their multichannel fulfilment systems, a December 18 guarantee is losing its gloss

Fulfilment in and around Christmas has improved dramatically in the past few years.

So much so that retailers have come up with another holiday to promote their services.

Free Shipping Day, held annually, is when shoppers can use firms that guarantee delivery by Christmas Eve.

It has not yet attracted the hype of its bigger discount day brothers – not least because retailers continually outdo one another to go as close to the wire on festive fulfilment as they can.

To download the Retail Week white paper on Making Sense of the Online shopping day phenomenon, in association with ChannelAdvisor, visit Retail-week.com/discount-days