Black Friday and Holiday shopping: four tech-driven strategies to capitalize on retail trends

Retailers have decided to begin Black Friday sales early again in 2024; last year, many retailers started promotions as early as September. This trend will continue, driven by a shorter holiday season of just 27 days between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Adobe forecasts a record $240.8B will be spent online this holiday season, showing 8.4% growth over 2023. Factors — such as interest rate cuts and the national election - may cause spending to fluctuate between $238.1B (7.2% growth) and $242.1B (9.0% growth), according to that same forecast.

The National Retail Federation forecasts that overall winter holiday spending will grow between 2.5% and 3.5% over 2023. That works out to between $979.5 billion and $989 billion in total holiday spending, compared with $955.6 billion during the same period, November and December, last year. Online and other non-store sales, which are included in the total, are expected to increase between 8% and 9% to between $295.1 billion and $297.9 billion. This figure is up from $273.3 billion last year.

During Cyber Week (Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday), steep discounts are expected, with industry estimates ranging from 10-30%, driving north of $40B in online spending. Mobile revenue share is expected to hit a record 53.2% for the season as 71% of respondents said they plan to use their devices for online shopping on Black Friday. 

Salesforce predicts that 40% of 2024 holiday purchases will be made by loyal repeat buyers. Therefore, retailers should be prepared to share role-appropriate loyalty data. This would include shopper profiles, preferences and purchase history. All this data should be instantaneously accessible to store personnel, call center workers, marketing teams and the customers.

Retailers today need a flexible, reliable network that allows them to make optimal use of bandwidth Ultra-High Speed data transfer can be a distinct competitive advantage for retailers seeking to deliver timely deals and in-store promotions via all customer touchpoints. The optimal approach to retail data transfer would be based on a network that’s designed to support cloud computing, big data, mobility and collaboration, among other use cases. Software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) meets these needs, allowing physical network resources to be centrally managed and efficiently consumed as needed.

2024 Holiday shopping: How connectivity and infrastructure can drive market share

Here are four areas on which retailers can focus their tech spending to help drive market share:   

Mobile touchless technology on the upswing: Customers have quickly adapted to mobile touchless technology. For example, U.S. smartphone scans of QR codes are expected to increase from 83.2 million in 2022 to nearly 100 million in 2025.

Retailers are employing innovative methods to use smartphone technology. Customers can receive push notifications and discounts as soon as they enter the store, and subsequent messages as they pass specific products or aisles. In many cases, loyalty cards are being replaced with digital versions stored on phones.

To capitalize on these opportunities, retailers should ensure they can deliver a strong high capacity WiFi connection across all their locations to provide service wherever their employees and customers may need it. 

The key to success may lie in how retailers collect and manage all the customer data they gather. Today, more retailers are using artificial intelligence and machine learning to capture data and predict consumer behavior. What’s more, shopping apps and loyalty reward programs are a terrific way to gather data. This data can then be used to personalize offers and messaging. 

To help protect all that valuable data, consider a managed security solution. Optimal solutions offer comprehensive features including firewall and encrypted VPNs, antivirus and anti-spyware, content filtering and intrusion detection.

Voice commerce is heard from: The voice commerce market in the U.S. is expected to grow significantly at a CAGR of 22.3% from 2024 to 2030, according to Grand View Research. In the US, Siri®, Alexa™ and Google Assistant™ are leading the pack, and voice assistant users increased to 145 million by the end of 2023, according to e-marketer. 

There are a few foundational components necessary to enable voice commerce. Retailers need robust data capture and storage systems for customer information, orders and product and inventory information. For voice commerce transactions to happen in real-time — as consumers expect — all that data needs to be cloud-based and instantly accessible for AI and machine learning applications to execute based upon the voice command. 

That is why a strong network infrastructure is the foundation for voice commerce. Solutions are available today to enable retailers that leverage fiber internet, cloud connectivity and other managed network services to break down data silos, understand and respond to customers faster and optimize supply chains — across their entire retail footprint. 

Contactless checkout for Gen Z and Millennials: Gen Z and Millennial shoppers surveyed responded that more than 70% are willing to shop or spend more with retailers offering contactless checkout.  These self-checkout options can deliver a seamless experience across all customer touchpoints, whether online, in-store, mobile, or through social media. 

With touchless interaction, customers can gain more control of the shopping experience, while retailers can deploy staff and manage inventory more efficiently. As with any business strategy, touchless interaction is most successful with the right implementation. Ensuring superior connectivity through Ultra-High speed data capacity is key to capitalizing on the opportunities for retailers here.

So, what’s the long-term outlook for touchless technology in retail? All signs point to continued growth and adoption. The most successful companies will be the ones that combine a sound business strategy with top-notch technology and support.

Network security and SD-WAN: Retailers need network security plus consistently fast data transfer speeds delivered with low latency. Application prioritization is also essential. For example, retailers may need to prioritize certain traffic, such as payment transactions, while keeping functions such as guest WiFi and logistics running efficiently in the background. What’s more, they need dedicated IT support to keep operations running 24/7, often across multiple distributed locations. 

SD-WAN networking solutions offer dynamic routing based on application-aware traffic prioritization — harnessing automated functionality that make it more scalable and affordable than legacy MPLS networks. SD-WANs also deliver comprehensive layers of security and predictable performance across private connections, with greater agility to adapt to shifting workloads in real time. Retailers should seek out networking partners that can design, implement, and fully manage or co-manage network services that fit their unique needs. 

Spectrum Enterprise can help

Our tailored technology solutions provide high-performance connections to your stores, data centers and the cloud — so you can adapt to industry changes, leverage valuable customer data and create engaging digital experiences. With Dedicated Fiber Internet solutions offering SLAs with 100% uptime guarantees and cloud connectivity solutions to help break down data silos, retailers can understand and respond to customers faster, while optimizing supply chains. 

Find out how Spectrum Enterprise experts collaborate with retailers of all sizes to build modern networks to support advanced data capture and storage.