Buen Fin 2021: Guide to Succeeding During This Season

Estimated reading time: 8 Min

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One of the strongest sales seasons of the year is approaching. From November 10 to 16 is Buen Fin and already, Mexican shoppers are eagerly awaiting these days of offers and discounts, where more than 95 thousand companies are projected to participate.

And your e-Commerce? Is it prepared for this event? Verify it in the following points. Don't let demand catch you by surprise!

How was 2020 experienced?

Let's start by analyzing this event's behavior during 2020 — knowing what happened during this period gives us a projection of the scenario we could have in 2021.

#CubboInsights Buen Fin 2020

According to AMVO studies, Buen Fin 2020 generated sales of $238.9 billion pesos, representing a notable 107% growth compared to 2019. Of this percentage, online sales accounted for 15.2% of transactions, which translated to $36.183 billion pesos. A figure that demonstrates greater relevance of this channel in purchase preferences.

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For this year, Buen Fin is expected to exceed 239,000 million pesos in sales, a figure similar to the previous year, but in fewer days — remember that during 2020 the event lasted 12 days, while in 2021 it will last 7 days.   

Other important aspects:

* Most relevant categories. During Buen Fin 2020, the most purchased categories were: fashion, electronics and appliances, followed by beauty, personal care, toys and cell phones. 

* Ecommerce vs Retail. 86% of Buen Fin users purchased some product or service combining the physical and digital channels, which highlights the importance of omnichannel for the consumer, who uses different media to find the product, compare and validate the purchase in their preferred channel. 

5 out of 10 shoppers stated that they plan to use the digital channel more in future editions of Buen Fin.

* Most popular payment methods. The most used payment method was debit card (35%), followed by credit card (34%), while cash had slightly lower relevance (31%). This behavior shows us a greater trend toward digital payment over physical. Over the last 3 years, cash payments have decreased and debit card payments have increased.

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* Trust and fear of fraud. 9 out of 10 shoppers felt safe purchasing products online during Buen Fin. Of total consumers, 77% had no problems with their purchases, while the remaining 23% experienced some inconvenience, mainly due to card rejection.

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* Online purchase incidents. Among the biggest obstacles consumers encountered are: ecommerce pages that are too slow (19%), online stores without inventory (18%), pages that don't allow completing the purchase, sites down or unavailable (23%). Evaluating these aspects is super important to determine if you're ready to participate in Buen Fin.

* Delivery location. The favorite delivery destination for shoppers was home — 90% of orders arrived at this location. 59% of purchases included free shipping, while 17% charged amounts between $101 and $300 pesos.

* Returns. Only 9% of purchases reported returns during Buen Fin; among the reasons that generated them, the main one was product damage (35%), followed by receiving a different order than what was ordered (25%) and lack of product quality (23%). Among users who generated returns, 31% considered the process arduous or difficult.

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* Advertising and investment. Compared to 2019, participating companies in this event increased their advertising investment by more than 50% for 2020. Where beauty, restaurants and home goods categories were the most representative. Most promotions offered in these ads had discounts between 30% and 50%.‍

* Reasons that motivated and limited online purchases. Among the main reasons that drove online shopping are characteristics such as: avoiding crowds in physical stores, saving time and travel, health care by not exposing oneself to COVID contagion, attractive discounts and offers.
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On the other hand, we find that not finding promotions of interest, not trusting certain offers, or not having money were the 3 main reasons for not buying, among those who didn't purchase any product or service during Buen Fin.

How prepared are you?

The success of your presence in Buen Fin will be based on planning and coordination of all areas of your ecommerce. Being prepared on the above points will allow you to face these days in the best way, increasing your sales, handling demand with fulfillment and efficiency, while guaranteeing the user a satisfactory purchase experience, which will translate into better revenue and many more loyal customers.

Summarizing the points seen during this article, finish by answering these structural business preparation questions — analyze and check off each aspect; if you have deficiencies in any point, it's time to take action, don't overlook it:

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• Does your ecommerce have the right hosting to support demand? 
• Do you have the inventory to meet your projection? 
• Do you have adequate operational headcount? Do you have operational contingency plans?
• Does your team have clear roles and responsibilities?
• Do you have space, supplies and packaging material for the demand?
• Do you have backup couriers / delivery methods in case the conventional one gets saturated?
• Are you ready to ship orders without delay?
• Do you have backup coupons for the customer service team?
• Do you have multiple daily courier pickups?
• Do you have different payment alternatives for banked and unbanked users?
• Do you have attractive offers and discounts to spark buyer interest, such as lower prices or free shipping? 
• Does your ecommerce have favorable reviews and comments from your customers?
• Does your ecommerce allow purchase transactions with ease and speed?
• Have you done enough online promotion of your products to attract visitors to your ecommerce?

After Buen Fin, comes Black Friday and Cyber Monday, events that for this year project a greater fusion between offline and online — the latter predominated in 2020 due to the contingency generated by COVID. Keep the above preparation in mind for these days as well, where ecommerce sales grow considerably compared to any other day of the year. 

Free yourself from operational stress — we help you handle the high year-end demand. We take care of your entire operation while you enjoy the sales. We're experts in ecommerce fulfillment, with the experience, technology, infrastructure and operational team to handle your demand with maximum efficiency and fulfillment, at the most competitive cost; visit us: https://www.cubbo.com/

100% of companies at Cubbo enjoy high demand without worrying about operational stress.

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Information Sources:

Shopify Statista Pandaancha Blackweek Mexico.as El Economista

Buen Fin 2020 Results Report AMVO

Report: Prepare yourself best practices Buen Fin – Mercado Libre

Secretaría de Economía México