Retailers Stiff Online Black Friday Shoppers
Just a few weeks after Black Friday and basking in the hum of non-discounted Christmas shopping season some retailers are having the last laugh at gullible consumers who bought into their Black Friday hype.
“I ordered just three movies advertised at Target.com as part of their Black Friday promotion,” said Janice King, of Reno, Nevada. “They had Happy Gillmore, Leatherheads, and Disney’s A Christmas Carol for $5.99 each and I ordered them just after midnight when their sale began. I got an order acknowledgement. I’m not a normal online shopper but I was sick this year and couldn’t go out. So I tried my Black Friday shopping online. A week after I placed the order I received a delay notice. Another week, another delay notice. Meanwhile, I stop by my local Target and there I see on the shelf the movies I ordered online. I talked to their customer service department but they would do nothing for me since I ordered the product online. So I waited. Today, the 9th of December, my order was just canceled. No explanation. No thank you. Target just doesn’t want my business.”
Janice’s story is a familiar one we’re hearing about traditional offline retailers stiffing shopper they are trying to gain online. We have similar stories from WalMart, Best Buy and even JCPenney customers — hooked into staying up late on Thanksgiving to shop, click and hand over credit card information — only to get nothing for the time wasted and the attempted purchases.
Janice was in a buying mood on Black Friday. She spent over $130 on new movies at Amazon. She purchased a computer from NewEgg.com. Janice found a GPS unit she liked at a hot price on Woot.com. She received every single one of those purchases made within the same hour she purchased three movies from Target.com.
The difference?
These are online retailers — their only business is customer service online. Target and WalMart and the like are offline retailers trying to be like the Amazons of the world. And they will never catch up and keep up.
“You bet it has soured me as a Target customer,” Janice said. “I’m ticked. It isn’t about three lousy movies. It is about how I was treated. It tells me that Target is a bait-n-switch operator. There was nothing on their website to indicate they couldn’t ship what they were advertising. There was nothing there to say quantities were limited. I left that site thinking I had made a purchase. They led me on. They lied to me. And to walk into their store within days and see my product sitting there and not being able to get it just burns me. Anything they have at Target I can get elsewhere. And elsewhere is ok for me from here on it.”
There are likely a million stories like Janice out there and probably a few too from online-specific retailers like Amazon. But offline retailers are at a distinct disadvantage when customer can see products locally that they order online. Despite the logistics needed to fill a shelf customers can’t differentiate between a product they see online and one they see in a store. They are one and the same. The cold interface of a website doesn’t give the intimacy of a one on one encounter in a store — but, when store personnel are not equipped to deal with an online purchase issue the customer doesn’t see online and offline at that point — they just see, as in this case, Target. And it stings.
The economic backdrop aside, survival beyond this decade for traditional retailers will depend upon a seamless integration with their cyber competitors. Target isn’t really Target online. WalMart isn’t really WalMart — to shoppers.
And until offline retailers — who far outgained online retailers 6 to 1 on Black Friday sales — learn this lesson they will continue to see online retailers taking a bigger chunk of the Black Friday sales. $1 billion was spent on Black Friday online. That pales in comparison. But with e-tailers like Amazon building smart phone apps to immediately counter the price they see in an offline store the day is soon coming when those Black Friday numbers will be reversed.
