November 17 marks Click Frenzy, touted as Australia’s largest online shopping extravaganza that kicks off the pre-holiday sales. It is followed by Black Friday and offers significant discounts on a wide range of products.
However consumer electronics retailers contacted by Appliance Retailer including Harvey Norman, JB Hi-Fi, 2nds World, Appliances Online, Leading Appliances, The Good Guys and Betta Home Living will not be participating.
Harvey Norman chief operating officer, John Slack-Smith said the retailer has never been involved in the Click Frenzy concept of the big online shopping event, and has no plans to do so in the future. “Harvey Norman does not believe in the ‘one in all in online’ marketing approach,” he told AR. “There is so much going for individual retailers from a whole of channel perspective within social media, online, traditional marketing and the traditional stores themselves and that is what good businesses are doing now. When you look at the appliance industry, the marketing strategies are firmly growing the individual company’s brands so there is no appeal in aligning with a semi-regular or one-off group sales event. “What we are finding is that our digital operations are driving strong increases in store foot traffic in our traditional retail stores. Consumers are researching online and coming into stores to talk to staff, compare products, particularly in the homemaker categories that our franchisees operate in.”
Seconds World will not be participating for a very good reason, “We did not make any money,” managing director, Peter Hammerman said. “It was also expensive to become involved as the platform operators take a percentage. We tried it some years ago but found it did not work for us. If you want to give product away it’s good for branding, looking for an avenue to clear stock or for a company with bigger mark-ups it might be worthwhile. We operate on very thin margins so it is definitely not a business opportunity for 2nds World. We strive to have competitive prices all year round not just for two days.” There was also a problem with the site that crashed twice and for some time, he said. “Obviously it could not handle the volume of traffic from consumers checking prices or trying to buy.”
The response from JB Hi-Fi was similar with CEO Richard Murray telling AR: “We have promotions that bring value to our customers every day, every week. Why do something twice a year when you can offer great value every day? That is what our customers want and we support this by regular online promotions but also make sure customers get rewarded with those deals in-store. What customer rate about JB is great value every day.”