Mitchell Hale!

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Consumer Behavior!
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Final Essay !
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December 9th!
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Black Friday Shopping!

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This year sales in black friday shopping dropped a decent amount since last year as
consumers for some reason felt the need to either not deal with all of the customer traffic or
simply just didn't want the products that were on sale. Either way sales declined and it was
surprising to companies around the nation, the following are some of the reasons our team
found and why we think sales might have dropped.!
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One of the main reasons we believe sales dropped are because people simply didnt
have enough time to go shopping. Time poverty if you will. Consumers were so pressed for
time that they simply couldn't go out all day and shop like they would have in years passed.
This making consumers either shop online or simply not shop at all. These can be timing factors
that include any household or any occupied housing unit. Family identity would be a factor to
look at as to what types of families consider going shopping on this day. Family identity being
how that family defines its household to both its members and to insiders/outsiders. This can be
the extended family (grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins) or the nuclear family (mother,
father, children).. This including boomerang kids or kids who go to college only to come back
home instead of mooing out on their own. These kids also most likely to have helicopter moms
or mothers that hover around their kids and insert themselves into mostly every aspect of their
kids lives. These same mothers also in full control of the kin-network system or maintaining
strong ties with all family members both extended and nuclear. !
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Smaller families as listed above will also have more syncretic decisions in which both
partners are present or are in control of the final decision, this can also be called synoptic ideal
(husband and wife agree on decision) unlike the autonomic decisions in which one sole
person is in control of the final say. This person most likely being the family financial officer, or
the individual in charge of the family bills and money surplus and spending, sometimes or often
the one bringing in the most money for the family. Even though autonomic and syncretic
decisions are different a recent study suggest men and women are developing more similar
tastes rather than different, this being called gender convergence. More men and women are
liking and buying the same products more often than ever before. Less and less are men and
women simply purchasing only female products or only male products as tastes within products
in the consumer society is ever changing and always will be. Time consuming scenarios are
also likely to be higher in any family that has a higher fertility rate than that of the national
average whether it be nuclear or extended. Timing issues can also arise from work, hobbies,
and other aspects of the daily life of any consumer. Another aspect of time we believe is to be
related to the queuing theory, or the study of waiting lines and the effect it has on consumers
that are dealing with them especially on a day like black friday. This theory of long waiting lines
has a great influence on what consumers buy and how much they might buy of a particular
product. Longer waiting lines usually equal less merchandise bought and in extreme cases no

products being bought at all. Retail waiting lines being in the top three for this theory as one of
the worst. !

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To add onto the previous section on families and timing we feel it would be beneficial to
look into the FLC or family life cycle concept as it will tell us about families needs and
expenditures over time. Things this would tell us so that we could be better equipped for days
like black friday would be whether families make either consensual purchase decisions,
where members agree on a desired purchase but disagree on how they will make it happen. Or
if families are making more accommodative purchase decisions, where families or groups
have different preference types for different products. Both of these types of decisions are very
focused on the family as a whole and the different ways these types of consumers get to their
final decisions is something that we can apply into our marketing scheme for large families.
Groups like these will also make more unplanned purchases due to deindividuation whereby
all the individual identities of each person are submerged within the group and nobody will be
singled out for anything. If one person likes an item another person in the group might buy the
same item or something like that item even though they were not planning to. For these types of
groups we should consider the idea of more direct selling as this is one of the best ways to
make products appeal to everyone and answer any questions that people in the group might
have. Most groups like this will have an initiator (person who brings up idea or need), a
gatekeeper (controls flow of info to the group), an influencer (consumer who tries to sway the
outcome), the buyer (the purchaser of the product), and last the actual user (the person who
actually consumes the product). Also with these groups consumers in todays society live by
somewhat of a rule of conformity which is a change in an action because of real or imagined
group pressure. Meaning that once one person buys the item in the group another person might
be obligated to buy the item and son on and so forth, which could have somewhat of a domino
effect and further boost sales. Very rarely do consumers want to step away from societys
norms or informal rules that govern consumers behavior in some cases and therefore people
will make the same purchasing decisions. !
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Another aspect we looked into were consumers shopping orientation or simply their
attitudes about shopping that day. Since sales declined we can assume that their attitudes
about shopping just simply weren't as high or exciting as they have been in the past which
would explain the sales drop. This we can also tie into showrooming or where consumers visit
a store to see what they like and then go online to try and find a cheaper price from another
company maybe. Maybe their attitudes to shop that day in person were low but they were
instead shopping online at home instead to again save time since they can more easily adapt to
the ever changing consumer tastes at a quicker pace. !
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A fourth option we discussed was that of our store image. We believe that our store
could use some re-organizing if you will in the department of our store image, we believe our
store is one that simply blends into the crowd of other big stores and we could use more
products that stand out to attract more customers into our store. This can start with simply
carrying new products or if you want to go to the extreme it can go all the way to atmospherics
or in simple terms the re-designing of our store such as point of purchase stimuli. Better
designs and displays have been shown to increase consumer spending by nearly ten percent.
This can be a sample tasting, or the use of a coupons, or a product demonstration.
Atmospherics can start with different colors, scents, and even sounds. Just something different
to retain our customers but also attract new customers. We can even include a small activity
store in a small department of our store to give consumers more control over the product they

buy and completely customize it to their liking which would almost guarantee that they would
buy it. We could also incorporate a mobile shopping app to enhance our customers
experience in a new fun imaginative way. these apps guide you through the store to certain
products you might be seeking or even to the nearest bathroom saving you time from searching
around for what you might be looking for and even reward points for certain products.!
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Additional factors we calculated in were the consumers budget. Maybe our consumers
simply didn't have the budget that they did last year to engage in any type of extreme buying.
Whether it be unplanned buying where they see products and it reminds them that they need it
at home or impulse buying where the urge or feeling to buy products is so high you just cant
help but spend more than you want. If they don't have the budget to buy items then consumers
will simply not include themselves in the annual black friday shopping spree. Consumers either
know this and wont go out to shop or will go out and just glance to see if maybe they can
possibly get something. However usually their mental budget or the amount of money the
consumer has in their head will take over and they will again not spend any money as they feel
the need to save what they have or that the product is not worth the price. !

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In conclusion of this report I hope our board can now see our teams findings about this
years black friday and why we had lackluster sales to that of past shopping years. We feel our
organization can change many factors with the right leaders and training to make these
changes. If we can change these things, slowly over time we feel that our company Kohls will
be in the top three if not the leader in black friday sales shopping in years to come. The changes
are going to have to take time, dedication, and patience all the way from the CEO to the newest
workers/interns of our organization. But with these changes we feel our profits in sales and
revenue will increase exponentially and stay that way as long as we keep up with our
consumers needs, wants, and tastes in our products. !
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