- Valuedynamx urges retailers to align with travel reward programmes to maximise spend during key retail peaks
- For reward programmes, this alignment enables relevance and engagement through non travel everyday spend
In what has been an unusual year where different trends and behaviours have emerged, early year-on-year spending patterns indicate consumer spend this Black Friday will exceed previous years, according to Collinson Valuedynamx. With competition greater than ever, Valuedynamx is urging retailers to align with travel reward programmes to drive incremental spend throughout peak periods based on spending insights over the past year.
Valuedynamx’s insights give retailers an early indication of consumer shopping trends across financial services and travel reward programmes ahead of one of the busiest times of the year, Black Friday. The insights show electricals will, once again, be popular in 2021 with spend increasing by 3% compared to last year – or an incredible 70% vs 2019. It also shows that, compared with this time in 2020, there has been a 36% increase in Entertainment & Leisure spending, and a 20% increase in Food & Drink spending. This increase has come hand-in-hand with a rise in global travel, with travel bookings showing an increase of 189% year-on-year, driving both direct spending and associated travel purchases. With pent up travel demand and restrictions easing, there has been an increase in travel bookings outside of the usual peak months of January and February. Heading towards Black Friday, spend on travel has levelled off, and now focused back on retail categories – great news for retailers at a peak period of consumer spend.
As the busiest time of year approaches, consumers will be looking to get the best value on their Black Friday purchases. Retailers have a real opportunity to align with travel reward programmes as they can be a powerful driver of incremental spend without the need to further discount products when competing for share of wallet, and demonstrate the value of these programmes being relevant to their members everyday behaviour.
"With a strong return to travel bookings, this is more relevant than ever as consumers plan reward-based bookings, including long-term travel, around their usual peak retail behaviour.” Berry continued.
Already, Valuedynamx has seen an increase in spending from reward programme users across its platforms of 26% YoY, and reports that the number of active shoppers on these same platforms is up 7% YoY – or, perhaps more pressingly, up by 2% compared with ‘pre-Covid’ numbers from 2019. Last year, the company saw a 10% increase in unique shoppers on Black Friday, compared to 2019, and these early signs show this year could exceed that figure.
“We’re seeing a strong desire from retailers to look at new avenues and opportunities to drive footfall across all channels - investing more in pay for performance models to reach a wider audience cost effectively to differentiate their marketing strategy. If they can get on the front foot to leverage this within their strategy, they put themselves in a much better position to attract customers by offering rewards outside of pure price discounts. This is especially important at a time of year when competition for that audience is at an all-time high,” added Berry.
The data comes from Valuedynamx’s global network of loyalty commerce platforms, which provide access to over 400 million loyalty programme members across 28 online shopping portals. Valuedynamx’s extensive global network enables consumers to earn and spend loyalty currency linked to leading travel and financial services reward programmes – connecting customers to branded engagement opportunities and providing unique data insights into how people are spending.
