Seasonal Sales

Seasonal sales are the period during a particular season, event, or holiday when retail companies and brands launch great discounts and promotions on their products or services to increase their sales volume. This retail strategy aims to target a mass audience and attract specific customer groups. However, every season requires a different marketing strategy and approach to ensure success, maximize profits, and avoid losses.

Even the top brands require stock clearance, which is only possible with such sales. The four prominent seasons that the companies consider for planning the sale include:

1. Spring: This period is from mid-March to mid-June and reminds us of vacations. There are many different days to celebrate, such as Earth Day and Easter.
2. Summer: The summer period is between June and September, which is also the time for National Day celebrations and sales.
3. Fall: The autumn is from October to November, which is the period of Thanksgiving and Black Friday sales.
4. Winter: Winter lasts from December to February, when many holidays, events, and festivals, such as Christmas, New Year, Valentine's, etc., give many reasons for shopping.

Retail businesses have to prepare a lot for launching such a sale to make it successful. Given below is a stepwise process that the businesses usually follow:

1. The firms should initially review their past sales records to identify the seasonal trend and then plan their future seasonal sales goals based on this data analysis.
2. The next step is to understand the target audience or potential customers for each season, like women and teenagers during the Black Friday sales.
3. The firm should assess and optimize inventory management while centralizing the identified potential customers or target audience.
4. In this step, the firm needs to plan its logistics, supply chain, stock size, delivery process, and restocking mechanism to ensure sufficient availability of goods and services.
5. Next, the business needs to lay out a blueprint for its marketing campaign and advertising; the idea is to use creative and attractive promotion themes to allure potential customers.

Let us have a look at various other similar sales launched around the globe:

Example #1

Suppose a retail clothing brand plans to maximize the sales of its summer clothes for all age groups by launching a summer sale in June. The brand initiated the hiring of 48 retail seasonal sales associates across its 23 stores nationwide to ensure that the customers get the best of their shopping experience.

Meanwhile, the company aired advertisements and marketing campaigns both online and offline, featuring up to 40% off deals on summer clothes throughout May. The brand received a great response, which increased its sales revenue by 77% from the same period last year.

Example #2

Inditex, the company behind Zara, witnessed an 11% surge in sales in local currencies from February 1 to March 11, leading to a 5.9% increase in shares, reaching a record high. The credit goes to its Zara season sale for the Spring collection. Also, the brand's annual net profit soared by 30% to 5.4 billion euros, meeting expectations. The company's yearly sales hit 36 billion euros, marking a 10% rise. Inditex plans to invest 900 million euros annually until 2025 in logistics and allocate 1.8 billion euros in 2024 to expand store space and enhance technology.

Furthermore, the company intends to increase its dividend payout by 28% to 1.54 euros per share, exceeding analysts' projections. Inditex operates 5,692 stores globally, with January inventories down 7% compared to the previous year. Zara's strategic pricing adjustments and product diversification have positioned it well against rivals like H&M.

Customers often await such sales when purchasing appliances, furniture, electronic products, and other expensive goods or services. While it is the best time for consumers to save extra bugs, businesses undertake such a retail strategy due to its following advantages:

• Maximizes Footfall: Such sales are often promoted among the mass public, which makes them visit the store or website during this period, thus increasing customer traffic or footfall.
• Improves Business Reach: It provides an opportunity to reach out and allure a large potential customer base through aggressive promotional campaigns and huge discounts.
• Initiates Up-selling and Cross-selling: The increased footfall provides an opportunity for businesses to pitch premium offerings and other products that may be of customer interest, hence alleviating sales.
• Increases Brand Awareness: Sales promotions introduce customers to new companies, thus spreading greater market awareness of the particular brand and its offerings.
• Strengthens Customer Loyalty: Brands that run loyalty programs, such as providing loyalty points or rewards to customers who shop during seasonal sales, can foster customer loyalty.

Although these sales are necessary for businesses to keep going, they have certain disadvantages that must be addressed. These are:

• Off-Season Payroll: Many firms need to maintain extra staff during such sales to ensure a smooth flow of business operations, which raises their human resource expenses in the off-season.
• Low-Profit Margin: These sales run heavy discount offers and promotions, which substantially reduce the company's profit margin. Thus, actual profits can be seen only when the sales revenue is magnificent.
• Inventory Management Challenges: An optimistic business may overstock goods, perceiving a high demand during sales, while some may run out of stock in the mid-sale due to unexpected response.
• Negative Brand Perception: Companies that make such sales now and then may compromise customers' interest in and appeal to their products and services.