SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 30, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — This year has been hard on brick-and-mortar stores, with many famous brands reducing their shopping mall footprint. While a recent survey uncovers a bright spot on the fourth quarter horizon for U.S. retailers, seasonal challenges remain. The good news is slightly more consumers say they intend to go into physical stores on Black Friday this year than in 2018 – 39% percent, up 2% from the response in a similar consumer survey last year.
Of the 61% of U.S. consumers who do not plan to go into physical stores this year on Black Friday, one third (33%) say they simply “never” go. What poses difficulty for retailers is that 28% claim they used to go shopping on Black Friday but have stopped.
These holiday shopping trends are results from a wider research survey to be released in November by Genesys® the global leader in omnichannel customer experience and contact center solutions. Genesys has conducted a series of nationwide surveys throughout the year, the latest of which polled 800 adult consumers in the U.S.A. about their opinions on the increasingly automated customer experience.
Why are Black Friday shoppers staying home?
U.S. survey participants cite three main reasons for not planning to go into physical stores on Black Friday 2019:
- The stores are too busy (37%).
- The price reductions are not worth the inconvenience (25%).
- Online shopping is easier (27%).
That first figure represents a whopping 30% drop from the 2018 Genesys survey in the impression that brick-and-mortar stores are too busy, when 67% of respondents cited the crowds as their main reason for staying home. In addition, the survey found poor customer service isn’t the culprit for many Americans’ choice to avoid stores this season. In fact, only 4% say it is their primary reason for not going into brick-and-mortar stores on Black Friday. This is a drop from 8% in the 2018 survey.