The DataWeave Blog

Tag: Ulta Beauty

Black Friday vs Boxing Day: Which Sale Event Offered Better Deals?
When it comes to shopping events, Black Friday stands out as one of the most anticipated dates for scoring deals. Typically occurring the day after Thanksgiving, the weekend kicks off the holiday shopping season with a frenzy of discounts. But Boxing Day, celebrated on December 26, is also well-known for its post-Christmas clearance sales.

This Black Friday, US eCommerce sales increased by a hefty 14.6% in 2024, according to Mastercard SpendingPulse. While Black Friday leads in overall revenue generation for retailers, Boxing Day presents unique opportunities for clearing post-holiday inventory.

For a consumer, which sale event is likely to offer the most attractive deals?

At DataWeave, we analyzed discounts across retailers and categories to uncover the answer.

Our Methodology

For this analysis, we tracked pricing data across major retailers for Black Friday and Boxing Day. To provide a comprehensive analysis of Black Friday pricing strategies, we explored a matched products dataset, comparing identical 14,000+ SKUs across retailers within key categories.
- Categories included: Consumer Electronics, Home & Furniture, Apparel, Health & Beauty, Grocery
- Retailers included: Amazon, Target, Walmart, Sephora, Ulta Beauty, Overstock, Home Depot, Best Buy, Saks Fifth Ave, Nordstrom, Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, Neiman Marcus
- Timeline: November 26 (Black Friday), December 26 (Boxing Day)
Average Discounts: Black Friday vs Boxing Day

Our analysis reveals that Black Friday generally offered steeper discounts across most categories, although Boxing Day wasn’t far behind. Here’s a breakdown:

While Black Friday led in most categories, Apparel saw a slight edge on Boxing Day, with discounts averaging 40.22% compared to 37.67% on Black Friday. Electronics, Beauty, and Home, however, remained more lucrative during Black Friday.

Top 5 Products Higher Discounts on Black Friday

Diving deeper into specific products, here are our top 5 picks offering better discounts during Black Friday.
- Appliances like an Immersion blender set offering a discount of 88.29%, significantly higher than its Boxing Day offer of 86.62%.
- High-end electronics like the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 also saw substantial markdowns at 84.60%.
- In beauty and fashion, both La Roche Posay’s retinol serum and Vera Bradley’s satchel offered discounts above 80%.
- Even everyday essentials like paper towels enjoyed generous discounts, with markdowns reaching 82.35% during Black Friday compared to 76.47% on Boxing Day.
Top 5 Products With Higher Discounts on Boxing Day

Boxing Day revealed some remarkable deals across diverse categories, with certain products offering significantly better value than their Black Friday counterparts.
- The JBL Go 2 portable speaker emerged as the standout, with an extraordinary 82% Boxing Day discount compared to just 20% on Black Friday—a dramatic 62% difference.
- Home furnishings showed strong Boxing Day performance, with the Costway accent armchair set reaching 80.30% off.
In Conclusion

Black Friday reigns supreme in driving early holiday sales, offering deeper discounts and drawing larger crowds. However, Boxing Day remains critical for retailers to offload surplus inventory and attract post-holiday shoppers.

By combining insights from both events, retailers can refine their strategies to maximize revenue and enhance customer satisfaction. For shoppers, the decision comes down to timing—shop early for better deals or wait to capitalize on clearance markdowns. The products and categories with more attractive offers tend to vary between these two sale events. Hence, as a shopper, it’s a good idea to keep track of prices all through the holiday season to take advantage of the best deals.

Check out our comprehensive coverage of Black Friday 2024 deals and discounts across categories.

For a deeper dive into the world of competitive pricing intelligence and to explore how our solutions can benefit apparel retailers and brands, reach out to us today!
January 21, 2025
Health & Beauty Deals on Black Friday 2024: Insights from Top Retailers and Brands
The U.S. health and beauty retail sector shows remarkable resilience amid economic uncertainties, with the skincare market projected to hit $21.83 billion in 2024. Black Friday data reinforces this trend, with health and beauty products seeing a 14.6% surge in web traffic compared to last year.

At DataWeave, we conducted an in-depth analysis of Black Friday discounting trends in the U.S. health and beauty sector. DataWeave’s AI-powered pricing intelligence platform was used to monitor pricing and discounts across Sephora, Ulta Beauty, Walmart, Target, and Amazon during Black Friday 2024. The study covered 19985 SKUs from November 10-29. We focused on the top 500 products ranked for each search keyword on each retail site, using targeted terms aligned with categories like “skincare” and “fragrance”.

The results? Beauty leads across categories in discount depth this year, with some retailers offering significant markdowns.

The Beauty Boom: More Than Just Looking Good

If there’s one thing the pandemic taught us, it’s that self-care isn’t just a luxury – it’s a necessity. This Black Friday proved that beauty has become an indispensable part of consumers’ lives, with retailers offering unprecedented discounts and crafting strategic promotions to capture the growing demand.

The Absolute Discount represents the reduction of the selling price compared to the Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP). The Additional Discount reflects how much lower the selling price is during Black Friday compared to its price a week before the sale. This metric reveals the actual or effective value of the sale event, beyond the standard discounts typically offered.

Ulta Beauty led with 45% average discounts, followed by Sephora at 38.1% and Walmart at 35.2%. In terms of additional Black Friday discounts, Ulta maintained dominance at 35%, with Sephora following at 28%.

Hair care emerged as the standout category, with Ulta Beauty offering up to 56% discounts, reflecting sustained demand for at-home beauty routines. Skincare saw fierce competition, with Sephora emphasizing premium discounts (37%) while Walmart focused on value pricing (32.5%).

Fragrance and Makeup attracted consumers with targeted promotions from Walmart and Ulta Beauty, signaling strong demand for gifting items.

Major beauty brands echoed the sentiment. Premium skincare brand Clinique leads with 50.6% average discounts. Meanwhile, drugstore staples like Revlon (29.1%) and Maybelline (24.4%) balanced accessibility and affordability, driving mass-market appeal. Popular beauty and makeup brand L’Oreal Paris also offered a modest 22.8% average discount, reinforcing its position as a value-oriented brand.

The more interesting story? The massive shift in brand visibility, as our share of search rankings denote:
- Shampoo and hair care brand Tresemmé saw an unexpected 5.5% jump in the share of search results
- Beauty brand Herbal Essences gained 5.1% in share of search well
Declines in share of search were noted for brands like L’Oreal Paris (-1.8%) and Pantene (-0.6%), indicating missed opportunities in promotional visibility.

Insight: What’s driving this beauty boom? TikTok and social media continue to fuel beauty purchases, with viral products driving significant search and sales spikes. Plus, the “skinification” of hair care has turned basic shampoo shopping into a full-blown beauty ritual.

Who Offered the Lowest Prices?

In the previous analysis, we focused on the top 500 products within each subcategory for each retailer, showcasing the discount strategies for their highlighted or featured items. However, to identify which retailer offered the lowest or highest prices for the same set of products, it’s necessary to match items across retailers. For this, we analyzed a separate dataset of 1133 matched products across Health & Beauty specific retailers to compare their pricing during Black Friday. This approach provides a clearer picture of price leadership and competitiveness across categories.

Here are the key takeaways from this analysis.
- Bloomingdale’s emerges as the overall leader, offering the highest average discount of 14.87%, closely followed by Bluemercury (12.41%).
- Ulta Beauty ranks third (10.94%), demonstrating competitiveness across key subcategories, while Sephora trails with the lowest average discount (7.33%), reflecting a more premium positioning.
- Ulta Beauty leads in Hair Care with the highest discount (22.62%), while Bluemercury dominates in Skin Care (13.81%), Makeup (22.98%), and Fragrance (10.6%).
- Sephora consistently offers the lowest discounts across all subcategories, reflecting their premium positioning.
- Bluemercury offers the lowest prices for luxury brands like Kiehl (27.02%) and Laura Mercier (34.87%), with Bloomingdale’s closely trailing.
- Bloomingdale’s leads for Bumble and Bumble (13.59%) and Hourglass (23.41%), showcasing strong promotional efforts.
- Sephora maintains a more restrained discount strategy, with notable leadership only for Estée Lauder (7.18%).
- Ulta Beauty shines in offering the steepest discount for Briogeo (33.26%), emphasizing competitiveness in key brands.
What’s Next for Holiday Discounting?

For retailers, the message is clear: traditional holiday playbooks need a serious update. For shoppers, it means unprecedented opportunities to score deals in categories that traditionally held firm on pricing.

Want to stay ahead of retail trends and optimize your holiday shopping strategy? DataWeave’s commerce intelligence platform helps brands and retailers strategically navigate these shifts. Contact us to learn more about how we can help you make data-driven decisions in this rapidly evolving retail landscape.

Stay tuned to our blog for forthcoming analyses on pricing and discounting trends across a spectrum of shopping categories, as we continue to unravel the intricacies of consumer behavior and market dynamics.
December 3, 2024
Do Amazon’s Competitors Lower Prices During Prime Day?

As the retail landscape continues to evolve, events like Amazon Prime Day have become more than just shopping extravaganzas—they’ve transformed into strategic battlegrounds where retailers assert their market positions and brand identities. Prime Day 2024 was no exception, serving as a crucial moment for retailers to showcase their pricing prowess, customer loyalty programs, and category expertise.

In an era where consumer expectations for deals are at an all-time high, the impact of Prime Day extends far beyond Amazon’s ecosystem. Retailers like Walmart, known for its “everyday low prices,” Target with its emphasis on style and value, and Best Buy, the electronics specialist, have all adapted their strategies to compete. These companies didn’t just react to Prime Day; they proactively launched their own pre-emptive sales events, with Target Circle Week, Walmart July Deals and more, effectively extending the shopping bonanza and challenging Amazon’s dominance.

For Prime Day, we analyzed over 47,000 SKUs across major retailers and product categories to publish insights on Amazon’s pricing strategies as well as the performance of leading consumer brands. Here, we go further to delve into the discounts offered (or not offered) by Amazon’s competitors during Prime Day. Our analysis reveals that some retailers chose to compete on price during the sale for certain categories, while others did not.

Below, we highlight our findings for each product category. The Absolute Discount is the total discount offered by each retailer during Prime Day compared to the MSRP. These are the discounts consumers are familiar with, displayed on retail websites prominently during sale events. The Additional Discount, on the other hand, is the reduction in price during Prime Day compared to the week prior to the sale, revealing the level of price markdowns by the retailer specific to a sale event.

Consumer Electronics

In the Consumer Electronics category, Best Buy stood out as a strong competitor, offering an Additional Discount of 5.9%—the highest among all competitors analyzed. This is unsurprising, as Best Buy is well-known for its focus on consumer electronics and is likely aiming to reinforce its reputation for offering attractive deals in order to maintain its strong consumer perception in the category.

Walmart was a close second with a 4.3% Additional Discount while Target reduced its prices by only 2% during the sale.

Apparel

In the Apparel category, Walmart’s Additional Discount was 3.1%, demonstrating its willingness to be priced competitively on a small portion of its assortment during the sale, without compromising much on margins.

Target, on the other hand, opted out of competing with Amazon on price during the sale, choosing instead to maintain its Absolute Discount level of around 11%.

Home & Furniture

The Home & Furniture category showcased diverse strategies from retailers. Specialty furniture retailers such as Overstock and Home Depot provided Additional Discounts of 3.9% and 2.5%, respectively, compared to Amazon’s 6.9%. This indicates a clear intent to maintain market share and remain top-of-mind for consumers despite Amazon’s competitive pricing.

Although Target didn’t significantly lower its prices during the sale, its Absolute Discount remains substantial at 18.9%. This suggests that Target’s markdowns were already steep before the event, which could explain the lack of further reductions during the sale.

Health & Beauty

The Health & Beauty category saw minimal participation from Amazon’s competitors, with the exception of Sephora, which reduced prices by 3.7% during Prime Day.

Ulta Beauty chose not to adjust its prices, likely reflecting its strategy to uphold a premium brand image. Walmart, on the other hand, offered a modest Additional Discount of 2% on select items. Given Walmart’s generally affordable product range, its total discount remained relatively low, around 3.5%.

In Conclusion

During Prime Day, Walmart was the only major retailer that made an effort to compete, albeit modestly. Target, on the other hand, largely chose not to offer any additional markdowns. However, several category-specific retailers, such as Best Buy in Consumer Electronics, Overstock and Home Depot in Furniture, and Sephora in Health & Beauty, aimed to retain market share by providing notable discounts.

What this means for consumers is that even on Amazon’s Prime Day, it’s not a bad idea to compshop to identify the best deal.

For retailers, the key takeaway is the importance of quickly analyzing competitor pricing and making agile, data-driven decisions to improve both revenues and margins. By utilizing advanced pricing intelligence solutions like DataWeave, retailers can optimize their discount strategies, better navigate pricing complexities, and drive revenue growth — all while staying prepared for major shopping events and beyond.

Reach out to us today to learn more!

August 21, 2024