Weekly news: Romanian Black Friday, decide on Twitter the prices at Lidl, light bulbs can see you
Here are the most important news pieces about e-commerce from the last 7 days.
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Black Friday, a whole month of Romanian discounts
Romanian online shops use the expression “Black Friday” during the whole year, but November is the right moment to offer discounts. The first big Black Friday sale happened on November 18 and some shops even continued over the weekend. On our blog, you will find some figures and sales records from the biggest e-shops. The second Romanian Black Friday will be on November 25.
You can also read about a study performed by One Hour Translation, measuring the success of Black Friday in the world.
Lidl lets customers vote on Twitter on Christmas prices
Lidl has unveiled an ‘industry first’ social media initiative that allows customers to crowdsource the prices of select Christmas products. The Twitter-based strategy means the more customers tweet about a featured Lidl product, the lower its final price will be. The Lidl ‘Social Price Drop’ is a concept created by agency 360i Europe.
Read more at Marketingweek.com
How Light Bulbs Watch You Buy Groceries
In an enormous grocery store in northern France, the lights above the aisles aren’t all they seem to be. They look ordinary—more than a mile and a half of fixtures exuding bright light, folded into a grid overhead—but they’re actually flickering faster than the human eye can see. The unique patterns each individual section of lighting emits are a 21st-century twist on Morse code, meant not for people, but for the cameras on their phones.
Read more on TheAtlantic.com
A loss-of-sales of around 17 % due to damaged returns
The Händlerbund, within the framework of its international Fair Commerce Initiative, asked 856 online traders about their experiences with customer returns. When asked about the instances in which a package was returned with damaged original packaging, 75 percent of the online traders surveyed said they had had to deal with the problem. Every fifth return (21 %) is damaged in this way and closer to half of all the returned goods cannot be resold at the original price. As a consequence the online traders are forced to reduce the price by (on average) 35 percent.
Read more at Ecommerce-Europe.eu
