Several years ago my oldest son bought himself an iPad mini. Recently he received his first iPhone and as a result has been using his iPad infrequently. At the same time, my seven-year-old wants to buy an iPad and so his brother offered to sell him his iPad for $250. Over the last two or…
Yesterday I posted a few thoughts and my predictions for Apple’s fiscal Q2 results. Here’s my follow-up with some additional thoughts on the market implications and where we go from here. iPhone I had predicted Apple would sell around 37M iPhones in the quarter. Consensus was calling for 38.2M. Apple blew away not only the…
A few quick thoughts on the holiday shopping season: November 1st marks the officially official opening of the holiday shopping season. This year we saw a tremendous number of promotions kick-off on November 1st. Walmart kicked off its campaign at midnight and Amazon launched its Black Friday Deals Store, offering “Deals of the Day” through Dec.…
An all-digital world accelerates commerce. As “things” become digital or as physical non-digital things gain a virtual and digital identity the speed at which they can move approaches the speed at which digital things can move. This all results in the speed of commerce for both digital and non-digital things accelerating. In a digital world…
While in Seattle last week, I was able to visit the CityTarget between Union Street and Pike Street. Target announced their CityTarget initiative in the summer of 2012 and the first stores opened on July 25, 2012 in Seattle, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Stores in Portland, New York, and San Francisco would follow later that…
Apple released quarterly results for their fiscal third quarter yesterday. While a tremendous amount of ink has been spilled dissecting every ounce of the most recently concluded quarter as well as pontificating about the implications, I thought it worthwhile to look back over the last 15 quarters to see if any insights might be gleaned. Here…
For many tech categories, new models were historically announced at the beginning of the year and then brought to market in the Spring period (March/April). I think some if not all of this timing was driven by the need to sufficiently inventory the supply chain in advance of the holiday season. A few years ago…
Yesterday Best Buy announced they were exiting Europe through the sale of the 50 percent stake in their European joint venture to their partner in the JV – Carphone Warehouse. The deal totals roughly $775M – 573M in cash at closing, $124M in common stock of Carphone Warehouse with a 1-yr lockup period, $39M in…
For my past holiday predictions and commentary see the following:
Holiday 2012: Part I
Holiday 2012: Part II
Holiday 2012: Part III
Holiday 2012: Part IV
Holiday 2012: Part V
Holiday 2012: Part VI
Holiday 2012: Part VII
Holiday 2012: Part VIII
Holiday 2012: Part IX
Holiday 2012: Part X
Holiday 2012: Part XI – What we Learn from Black Friday EDM Promotions
While we still have CyberMonday before us, the Black Friday weekend is coming to a close. Most of the promoted items are known. Here is my rough count of the number of different offers promoted over the weekend for the following tech categories:…
For my earlier holiday expectations see the following posts:
Holiday 2012: Part I
Holiday 2012: Part II
Holiday 2012: Part III
Holiday 2012: Part IV
Holiday 2012: Part V
Holiday 2012: Part VI
Holiday 2012: Part VII
Holiday 2012: Part VIII
Holiday 2012: Part IX
Holiday 2012: Part X
We’ve seen Black Friday evolve in several ways in 2012. As I’ve written about elsewhere, Black Friday has gotten longer in several ways. First, stores have moved their opening hour forward. But stores have also expanded their Black Friday promotions in several other ways – many of which have to do with the timing of their promotional releases. As retailers have started previewing their official Black Friday circulars in advance, they’ve had to adjust other elements of their promotional cycle. This year promotions and marketing pieces were especially pronounced. I think it is instructive to review promotional emails in sequence. here’s a week of analysis:…