Category : Mobile Ethnography ; Qualitative Research

There is some debate as to where the term Black Friday originated, but one of the more prominent theories ascribes the honor to Philadelphia, where it was used to describe the heavy and disruptive pedestrian and vehicle traffic that would occur on the day after Thanksgiving.

Regardless of its origins, Black Friday has joined Cyber Monday and Singles Day as key calendar dates for retailers around the world. These various events have all had a dramatic impact on the percentage of shoppers who moved their budgets to online shopping over the past decade based on these ‘trigger events’.

Best research methods to understand Black Friday, Cyber Monday shopping behaviours

Spotting the enormous potential of Black Friday, online retailers have quickly got in on the act since 2005 when the term Cyber Monday was first coined in the US.

Since then the event has grown rapidly to the point where, according to Salesforce, U.S. holiday sales spiked in first three weeks of November 2021 - “with digital sales up 10 percent year-over year; YoY sales increased 4 percent for Cyber Week.

On the other side of the globe, consumers in China are gearing up for their equivalent; Singles Day. Singles Day which happens on November 11th every year is a shopping holiday popular among young Chinese people that celebrate their pride in being single.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday (the Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States), will always be earmarked by big brands as the ‘make-or-break’ day in the Q4 calendar.

Although Amazon's second Prime Day event of 2022 may not have been a hard hitter for the online retail giant (as reported by Bloomberg) - Black Friday and Cyber Monday always remain a staple of the holiday shopping season.

Simply put, retailers cannot afford to ignore the enormous value of these annual online shopping events.

What are the best tools for researching online shopping behaviours?

However, as single-day events, this can cause headaches for researchers tasked with understanding online shopping behaviors, experiences and expectations on these key days.

The window for understanding these retail phenomenons is short and the manic rush and impulsive decision-making processes of online shoppers can be difficult to research using traditional methodologies.

Researching online shopping journeys with Mobile Ethnography software

Although the shopping might be done in a single day, your research should not. 

As the big day’s approach, getting a true insight into how consumers will prepare, what stores they will visit, and what goods they intend to purchase is the perfect time to embed yourselves in their lives using Mobile Ethnography. 

Mobile Ethnography gives researchers the ability to understand all shopper personas from the super-organised Holiday Season Shoppers to the first-time Black Friday shoppers. With 2021 Sales on Black Friday increased 29.8% from 2020, retailers simply must be prepared to seize the biggest opportunity in the shopping calendar.

By letting consumers show you the adverts that resonate with them in the run-up and letting them tell you in their own words, in their own time how they feel about the day, you can gain the authentic insights that will guide successful strategies this year and in the years beyond.

Mobile Ethnography offers an agile, cost-effective of understanding the behaviors and motivations of consumers whether they’re shopping online in the US, China or anywhere in between. More powerful still, it offers a quick and easy way of noth only understanding the buyer journey but also understanding what the days mean to these shoppers using online qualitative research. 

Best tools for e-commerce / online shopper research

Whilst brick-and-mortar were traditionally the primary outlets for big bargains, consumers have shifted their search for killer deals online in recent years. As they trawl Amazon, eBay, AliExpress and Walmart in the digital world around the big day, understanding their experiences and expectations can be particularly difficult.

Although the internet has unquestionably opened up the world of opportunities for retailers (literally), it has provided a headache for researchers who want to understand consumer behaviors beyond the raw quant data. The numbers are there, but who are these shoppers in real life and what are they doing in the short window of time?

Indeemo’s mobile screen-recording can provide the human insight into the digital behaviors that will be missing in the reams of quantitative data left over for researchers to decipher in the aftermath of the day itself. Using mobile screen-recording, you can conduct online shopper experience research and see how consumers will search websites and apps for the best deal on the items they desire this Black Friday. 

In addition to showing you how they navigate and search their mobile, the voice-over functionality of the app will allow them to explain their navigation, experiences and feelings as they go about their business.

Let our platform support your online shopping behaviour / e-commerce research

As consumers have moved online for their Black Friday shop, another critical insight has been lost (or added depending on which way you look at it) by retailers: Context.

Flexibility and convenience are two of the biggest advantages online shopping boasts over their in-store retail equivalents. This means that you can order that pair of shoes on the train to work, the present for your sister at your desk during lunchtime and a new TV from the comfort of your sofa later in the evening.

Web-data won’t tell you where people are doing the shopping, but by allowing them to show you how they act and what they are thinking about, you can gain a greater understanding of the in-the-moment, contextual motivations and experiences.

From an ethnographic perspective, the apocalyptic scenes outside stores on Black Fridays in decades past (we’ve all seen those clips on YouTube!) served up an intriguing case for study and research. But what lengths are people going to online to get the deal they want? It’s time to let them give you that periscope into the big day with mobile ethnography

You may also like: Cyber Friday? Online Path to Purchase and Digital Shopper Research in the “New Normal”.

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The one thing they all have in common is that the journey is non-linear, random and omni-platform.

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