Black Friday online rush as Covid-19 influences consumers
The second wave of coronavirus is affecting how people shop and what they buy.
Keystone / Marcial Guillen
As the “Black Friday” cut-price offers kicked off, Swiss retailers expect online sales to be particularly good. The pandemic is affecting not only how people shop but also what they buy.
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In initial responses, online retailers say customers are rushing to take advantage of the offers.
For example, Digitec Galaxus, Switzerland’s biggest online retailer, says it got off to “a very good start” with the first products selling out shortly after midnight. Company spokesman David Kübler told the AWP news agency that vacuum cleaners and coffee machines were selling like “hot cakes”. Particularly popular this year are cell phones, computers and televisions, as well as all kinds of household articles and toys, he added.
The Brack.ch online shop also said Black Friday sales had started well, with consumer electronics and IT products the most popular items. Spokesman Daniel Rei said the company noticed significantly more visitors to its site during the night, but its servers withstood the high volume of traffic.
This was not the case for Coop subsidiary Interdiscount, whose site went down temporarily. Coop spokesperson Andrea Ruberti said it was assumed that this was because of a huge rush for Black Friday offers. The site is now up again.
Not surprisingly, first indications are that people are not rushing so much to the shops as in the past. For example, Swiss broadcaster RTS reports that on Friday in the western city of Lausanne the shopping streets were not packed, but rather like a Saturday. People are choosing to buy particularly in large quantities, it reports.
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