Singles Day vs. Black Friday: Swiss have a clear favorite
On Monday, Switzerland not only celebrates the start of Carnival, but also Singles Day. However, the Chinese equivalent of the US discount days Black Friday and Cyber Monday attracts comparatively little attention.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday have developed quite naturally in Switzerland over the past 10 years and have gradually spilled over from the USA to Europe - just like Valentine's Day and Halloween before them. Singles Day, on the other hand, was actively placed in the Swiss advertising landscape in German-speaking countries by a Chinese company and pushed in parallel with a major PR campaign. Many companies have already jumped on the new event and are offering a special "Singles Day discount" this Monday.
Unlike the advertising industry, however, Swiss customers are unimpressed by the Chinese Black Friday copy. A Comparison of Google Trends data for the two shopping days shows that the search volume for the keyword "black Friday" on Black Friday 2018 in Switzerland was significantly higher than the search volume for the keyword "singles day" on Singles Day 2018.
The difference becomes even clearer when you look at the absolute figures. The Google Ads Keword Tool shows that there were 550,000 search queries on Google for "black Friday" in November 2018, and just 22,200 for "singles day".
Even in the past few days the Swiss were apparently more interested in Black Friday 2019, which takes place on November 29, than in its Chinese counterpart - even though Singles Day is already today. (pd)
