Is Google your new shopping buddy?

 At the backend of the year, the season for shopping deals keeps expanding, and everyone is looking to get a piece, including digital giant, Google.  It all started with Black Friday, which caught on in the 80's as a post Thanksgiving shopping bonanza day, the day where the retailers went 'from red to black', or turned a profit, although the history goes further back then that.  The shopping craze has now expanded to the full Thanksgiving weekend, along with the introduction of Cyber Monday, which according to Reader's Digest is now the biggest shopping day of the year in the US, and even Green Monday, a more recent invention by eBay.  The expansion of these retail events has proliferated even further globally with Singles Day, a massive phenomenon in China.

With all of these 'deal days', retailers need to be savvy with their strategies to get in on the action and to capture the potential consumer spend.  Amazon has initiated its Prime Day, an exclusive event for its Prime members offering a huge range of deals, letting the company 'give back' to its loyal customers but also driving huge spend uplift by consumers. With so many choices consumers also need to be strategic to plan their shopping and figure out where, when and how to shop to get the best deals.  Many companies and news outlets look to offer advice to shoppers and highlight the best deals.  There is even a dedicated website blackfriday.com, complete with countdown, that helps consumers navigate potential deals.

With its rival Amazon stealing away share of search, particularly search with purchase intent, Google is looking for ways to keep the consumer captive and maintain their dominance as an advertising platform.  Just in time for this year's upcoming Black Friday, Google has announced new features on its shopping platform, Google Shopping. 

According to Mashable, this will allow consumers to determine if sales prices are good based on an assessment of the range of market prices, compare prices and shipping costs for specific products, and set price alerts.

This all sounds super useful, so it will be interesting to see how it impacts shopper behavior and traffic this deal season.  However, especially with the looming anti-trust case against Google, it will also be interesting how this further push to become the top trusted shopping buddy of the consumer will play out.