When I first arrived in the United States, it astonished me that Christmas sales in Retail stores began right after Thanksgiving day. Of course, with e-commerce, Black Friday and Cyber Monday get bigger every year. Now, no one bats an eyelid when Christmas sales go up in November.
In fact, it often seems to me that, from the day after July 4th, we are in a long discount season progressing to the peak retail holiday season. First, Back to School and Labor Day Sale, then Halloween sales, right after Labor Day, then Thanksgiving, and then the holy days of December. It is almost like the long weekend of the year when we wait in frigid February for the summer to come.
Now the extended selling season — interspersed with Halloween and Thanksgiving — has spread all over the world. Once quaintly American concept, birthed and nurtured by Sears Roebuck, and Great A&P, and other early 20th century chains, the months-long selling season is everywhere wherever the US e-commerce companies have entered.
On this blog and elsewhere, I have often commented that United States’ biggest export is its culture, through its movies and tv shows. Culture, that slowly pervades daily lives everywhere slowly but surely — yellow school buses, lockers in high schools, McMansions, curved cul-de-sacs, surfing t-shirts, Halloween, and even political terms like boomer and woke-ness.
While Halloween subcultures have always thrived in places like Tokyo in recent years — pick your costumes at Don Quixote and go to Roppongi or Harajuku — Halloween is now global. I hear the posh neighborhoods in New Delhi now celebrate Halloween, even dead in the middle of the pandemic. Secular Halloween celebrations are fun for children, even as the religious origins from All Saints Day eve, are still unconnected. The world is gleefully partaking in the cosplay of American life.
Thanks to the famous exports: the prodigious trailblazers Michael Myers and John Carpenter!
—
Amazon vs. Flipkart change Diwali in India
It is through this lens, we can see that the intensive competitive nature of India e-commerce appears to follow the US retail sales model.
Unlike in America, the serious holiday season in India is around Diwali, and not in December, even though the schools and universities are often closed during the Christmas holidays. Diwali is the peak “sales” season — with businesses opening books for the new year, and the celebrations festive all over India.
In this landscape, the recent Diwali kerfuffle between Amazon and Flipkart (now owned by Walmart) is fascinating. Essentially, Walmart and Amazon have taken up the no-holds-barred fight into India’s e-commerce sector, on every microlevel.
In 2021, Diwali is around November 4.
- Move 1: First Flipkart had planned Big Billion Days sales from October 7-12.
- Move 2: Amazon announces it will start Great Indian Festival Sale from October 4 to Diwali.
- Move 3: Flipkart advances its Big Billion Days sales to begin on October 3 (a day ahead of Amazon), within the sales period running to Oct 10.
- Move 4: Amazon changes the date for its flagship to begin on October 3 (thus matching the first day for Flipkart).
For now, an uneasy truce prevails.
—
My long-term prediction: there will be a month-long e-commerce Diwali Season in India. It will go from the day after Ganesh Chaturthi (Day of the fourth phase of moon in September) all the way to Diwali, thus lasting 4-5 weeks at least.
—
Happy Diwali to everyone celebrating!