Super Saturday 2020

Black Friday took an expected fall in 2020, and the loss of Thanksgiving traffic entirely alongside these dips created significant year over year visit declines for that entire weekend. But Super Saturday has a unique ability to give brands a boost, and there are indications that this year’s iteration may have significantly softened the negative blow.

Super Saturday’s Year-over-Year Performance

Super Saturday visits, like most other days in 2020, saw a dip for most retailers compared to their 2019 standard. Looking at 10 top retailers, there was an average year-over-year visit decline of 21.2% on the day.

Super Saturday Weekend’s Year-over-Year Performance

Yet, Super Saturday itself is not the only piece of the puzzle and the wider weekend needs to be taken into account. And here we saw a much stronger performance for these brands. In fact, the overall decline for the weekend dropped to just 12.7% for this group. Target, Walmart and T.J. Maxx saw visits down just 1.7%, 7.3%, and 6.8% respectively for the weekend year over year. And this doesn’t even take into account the days ahead of Christmas which consistently provide a huge boon for many retailers, especially Target and Walmart.

Mitigating Black Friday Losses?

But to fully appreciate just how significant and needed Super Saturday weekend was for key retailers, we only need to compare it to Black Friday Weekend. The group averaged over 18% better visits on Super Saturday weekend when compared with Black Friday weekend. And critically, Black Friday weekend was adjusted to measure Friday through Sunday to account for the loss of Thanksgiving visits almost entirely.

And this outpaced even the difference between Black Friday and Super Saturday weekends in 2019. In 2019, these same brands saw an average increase of 1.1% from Black Friday weekend to Super Saturday weekend, compared to the 18.1% increase in 2020. 

Does this mean that retailers have fully mitigated the offline losses caused by visit declines on Black Friday weekend? Not necessarily. But it does set up a series of factors that could point to a far better holiday season in offline retail.

Firstly, if the shifts in the magnitude of visits seen in 2020 remained during Super Saturday weekend, these visit numbers could portend an even better result with the boost in visits coming alongside higher conversions and larger basket sizes. Secondly, it shows the continued resiliency of offline retail and the ongoing demand from customers to frequent their favorite retailers when given the chance. This is just the latest sign that once the direct effects of COVID lift, the wider offline retail landscape could see a quick and effective recovery. Finally, this data does not take into account the days leading into Christmas which normally see a significant boost for many of these retailers. 

How will the full holiday season data look for top retailers? Visit Placer.ai to find out.