When it comes to getting holiday shoppers in the door, coupons and sales remain the most successful tool merchants are using.
This holiday season, retailers are faced with both an opportunity and challenge when it comes to attracting shoppers, Farla Efros, president of HRC Retail Advisory, explained in a recent article for Chain Store Age.
Efros said that, with more shoppers opting for eCommerce and a lower number of doorbuster offerings, retailers must rely on price as a way to draw in consumers.
According to Efros, 89 percent of consumers surveyed by HRC Retail Advisory said that discounts were a key factor in deciding which stores they planned to shop in during the holiday season.
“Sales and coupons are more influential than any other tactic in motivating a consumer’s decision to enter a store this holiday season,” she said. “Already, since Black Friday, we’re seeing retailers comply with heavy in-store discounts well below what we expected, as they look to eliminate their excess inventory and drive top-line sales.”
Another significant motivator for consumers, Efros noted, is store window displays. Nearly 87 percent of the survey respondents said these displays would influence their shopping decisions.
“And 79 percent of consumers surveyed said they would be influenced on what stores to visit this holiday season based on a retailer’s website,” she added.
“This is a very interesting time for retail, as we’re in the midst of a generational shift of consumers. As Generation Z begins to gain a foothold in the consumer-spending environment and millennials mature, their expectations are transforming the retail landscape,” Efros said. “In order for retailers to remain competitive, they must begin to develop a balanced approach to serving baby boomers and Generation X (who still have the vast majority of the spending budget), while positioning themselves to best serve the emerging and future consumer segments for longer-term success.”
Meta’s CEO criticized Apple for a lack of innovation and “random rules,” on a recent podcast.
And those rules, Mark Zuckerberg argued, hinder Meta’s profits, CNBC reported Friday (Jan. 10), citing comments made on an episode of the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast.
“On the one hand, [the iPhone has] been great, because now pretty much everyone in the world has a phone, and that’s kind of what enables pretty amazing things,” Zuckerberg told Rogan.
“But on the other hand … they have used that platform to put in place a lot of rules that I think feel arbitrary and [I] feel like they haven’t really invented anything great in a while. It’s like Steve Jobs invented the iPhone, and now they’re just kind of sitting on it 20 years later.”
He argued that iPhone sales are flagging because consumers were waiting to upgrade their devices, waiting for more improved models.
“So how are they making more money as a company? Well, they do it by basically, like, squeezing people, and, like you’re saying, having this 30% tax on developers by getting you to buy more peripherals and things that plug into it,” Zuckerberg said. “You know, they build stuff like AirPods, which are cool, but they’ve just thoroughly hamstrung the ability for anyone else to build something that can connect to the iPhone in the same way.”
Meta last year offered advertisers a way to avoid the 30% service charge levied by Apple. The offer lets businesses that use boosted posts on Facebook and Instagram can go to those platform’s websites on mobile or desktop devices to boost their content and not pay the service charge.
PYMNTS has contacted Apple for comment but has not yet gotten a reply.
In the podcast interview, Zuckerberg contended that Apple defends itself from criticism from other companies by saying it wants to protect user privacy and security. He added that it could solve that problem by improving its protocol, such as building better security and using encryption.
“It’s insecure because you didn’t build any security into it. And then now you’re using that as a justification for why only your product can connect in an easy way,” Zuckerberg said.
Zuckerberg added that if Apple stopped applying its “random rules,” Meta’s profit would double.
Apple and Meta reportedly considered working together last year, with the Facebook owner offering to integrate its artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot into the iPhone. However, Apple apparently rejected Meta’s proposal following two brief discussions.