Just some thoughts about Small Business Saturday. It's a good idea but some major problems in execution.
If you haven't heard of it, Small Business Saturday is a promotion by American Express set the day after Black Friday. AmEx makes a big deal of this, offering free advertising to participating businesses, listing them on a website and offering a $25 credit to AmEx using customers who register their cards and spend at least $25 in a participating retailer.
The idea is good, I am in favor of anything that drives business into local retailers. However, I question the wisdom of placing it on the Saturday after Black Friday for a couple of reasons.
First, the Saturday after Black Friday is arguably the third busiest shopping day of the year, only topped by Black Friday itself and the Saturday prior to Christmas. It doesn't need any additional promotion to draw more customers into local stores. They are out there and they are spending and Saturday gets a lot of additional spillover in terms of spending from Black Friday.
Second, having it on such a busy day makes it very hard to quantify the effect of all the promotion. Were increased sales due to Small Business Saturday or due to the halo effect of Black Friday? I can see if Small Business Saturday had an effect on AmEx sales as I can easily measure the number of purchases made with AmEx on SBS and compare them with a typical Saturday (FYI, it did bump AmEx sales up) but it would be much easier to quantify the effect on local business if AmEx would put this focus on a Saturday outside the holiday season.
Thirds, if you are a local retailer and doing anything with Black Friday, you are are trying to develop two promotions for major events that take place within 48 hours. That's a lot of work for a small retailer with limited hours, staff and funding. Moving SBS to a different Saturday would allow greater focus by retailers on both events, rather than diluting the attention paid to each.
Still a good program but certainly think the date should be moved, but I don't think AmEx will pay that much attention to one blog post.
If you haven't heard of it, Small Business Saturday is a promotion by American Express set the day after Black Friday. AmEx makes a big deal of this, offering free advertising to participating businesses, listing them on a website and offering a $25 credit to AmEx using customers who register their cards and spend at least $25 in a participating retailer.
The idea is good, I am in favor of anything that drives business into local retailers. However, I question the wisdom of placing it on the Saturday after Black Friday for a couple of reasons.
First, the Saturday after Black Friday is arguably the third busiest shopping day of the year, only topped by Black Friday itself and the Saturday prior to Christmas. It doesn't need any additional promotion to draw more customers into local stores. They are out there and they are spending and Saturday gets a lot of additional spillover in terms of spending from Black Friday.
Second, having it on such a busy day makes it very hard to quantify the effect of all the promotion. Were increased sales due to Small Business Saturday or due to the halo effect of Black Friday? I can see if Small Business Saturday had an effect on AmEx sales as I can easily measure the number of purchases made with AmEx on SBS and compare them with a typical Saturday (FYI, it did bump AmEx sales up) but it would be much easier to quantify the effect on local business if AmEx would put this focus on a Saturday outside the holiday season.
Thirds, if you are a local retailer and doing anything with Black Friday, you are are trying to develop two promotions for major events that take place within 48 hours. That's a lot of work for a small retailer with limited hours, staff and funding. Moving SBS to a different Saturday would allow greater focus by retailers on both events, rather than diluting the attention paid to each.
Still a good program but certainly think the date should be moved, but I don't think AmEx will pay that much attention to one blog post.
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