With Christmas just a few days away, several shoppers may still worry about what gifts to purchase for their loved ones. For those who are less tech savvy, purchasing the latest tech gifts for their more tech-inclined family members and friends may be mind-boggling.
Fortunately, the latest marketing research on the most popular tech products purchased during Black Friday and Cyber Monday could help consumers in their last-minute shopping frenzy. Though these marketing analytics are mostly meant for retailers to help them better focus their digital marketing strategies for the upcoming holiday season, this data can also be of great help to consumers who would like to make the best shopping decisions.
According to data analysis by Adobe for Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the United States, the best-selling tech or consumer electronic products during the biggest shopping holidays were Sony PlayStation 4, Microsoft Xbox, Samsung 4K televisions, Apple iPads, Amazon Fire tablets, LG televisions, and Apple MacBook Air.
In comparison to China’s online shopping extravaganza Singles’ Day, an Alibaba infographic lists popular tech brands that sold their products on Alibaba’s online retail platform Tmall during the one-day mega sale. These include Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Sony and Panasonic. China’s local smartphone brand Meizu was also one of the top selling brands during the first hour of the Singles’ Day sale.
Although there is no comprehensive breakdown on popular tech products sold during Singles’ Day, an Alizila article named some consumer electronic products that were featured during the online mega sale. It was without a doubt that Apple’s iPhone was one of the best selling tech products, but other featured tech products such as iRobot’s fully automated robot vacuum Braava jet 240, Beats’ Solo 3 Wireless headphones, and Leica’s Sofort instant film camera, also anticipated high sales volume for their products on Singles’ Day.
Will analysis of early holiday shopping data be able to forecast what people will view or purchase for Christmas? Kinetic Social, a social marketing services solution provider in the United States, believes so. According to an email response from the company’s representative, Black Friday was an “interesting time for viewing data” as it shows what Christmas gifts people might be buying earlier. Kinetic Social further said that the data from early holiday shopping such as Black Friday can help consumers do their research early, and take advantage of sales.
In its report, Kinetic Social uses data from its proprietary machine learning platform Spectrum covering more than 1.5 billion URLs to understand people’s interests and intent through the websites they viewed over Black Friday through Cyber Monday. The report notes that the influence of the tech industry on consumers was “staggering”, with close to 8.6 million people looking at iPad products on Black Friday alone. Online views on gaming products and headphones came in second. Though the Virtual Reality (VR) market is “very small”, Kinetic notes that VR consumers are “equally fascinated by all the new products on the market”.
The biggest online shopping holidays may have gone and past, but insights into consumers’ online viewing and spending patterns continue to help both consumers and retailers make better purchasing decisions and marketing strategies for Christmas.
(Top photo from Pexels.com)
