The 2020 holiday season has been as crazy as expected with major downturns on Black Friday for retail and malls. Yet, retailers have seen strength in new places this season, helping to offset those losses. And one place that may receive added focus in 2020 is Super Saturday. Super Saturday is an extremely significant day for the offline retail calendar, and while it falls short of the Black Friday standard, few other days surpass it. This post-Black Friday peak could be significant this year as it comes after the window where online orders can still come in time for Christmas.
So, what did we see in 2019, and what might that indicate about 2020?
Super Saturday’s Mall Effect
Looking at visits from 2018 and 2019 for 15 top malls across the US shows that Super Saturday had 26.2% and 29.7% fewer visits than Black Friday respectively. Yet, comparing Super Saturday to the Saturday after Black Friday - a huge retail day in its own right - shows that Super Saturday visits for these malls were up 18.0% and 29.4% in 2018 and 2019 respectively. In fact, while Black Friday was the most visited day for these malls in 2019 across the board, Super Saturday came in at an average place of 2.7 - making it the clear second biggest shopping day of the year for these top malls overall.
The Super Saturday Effect for Top Retailers
But it isn’t just malls that see the strength of Super Saturday. In fact, several outdoor-oriented retailers see even greater strength the Monday through Sunday that includes Super Saturday than the week that includes Black Friday. While Best Buy and Walmart see greater strength on Black Friday week, the week including Super Saturday still amounted to the second-highest trafficked week in 2019 for both.
While this is impressive in its own right, Super Saturday’s effect on some brands is even stronger. Off-price retailers Marshalls and Ross saw 48.6% and 37.2% more visitors respectively the week of Super Saturday than the week of Black Friday - making it the strongest visit week of the year for both. And while this relative strength didn’t quite reach the same level, Target, Dollar General, and Kohl’s saw 2.8%, 9.3%, and 0.6% more visits on the week of Super Saturday than on the week of Black Friday even though Black Friday still amounted to the highest visit day for several.
And much of that weekly strength centers around Super Saturday. For the seven brands analyzed, only Walmart saw Super Saturday fall out of the top two days of the year for overall visits - and it was the 3rd most visited. For Marshalls and Ross, it was the strongest day of the year, while it was the 2nd strongest day for Target, Best Buy, Dollar General, and Kohl’s.
What Could Super Saturday Mean in 2020?
So can Super Saturday make up all of the ground lost on Black Friday? Highly unlikely. Will it give a huge boost to brands that are already oriented to this day? Definitely.
This means that certain sectors including off-price apparel and supercenters like Target and Walmart will likely see major boosts pre-Christmas. This is all the more significant as the tightened time frame limits online competition.
What will Super Saturday bring in 2020? Visit Placer.ai to find out.
