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How Smartphones, Price-Check Apps, and Daily Deals Are Changing Black Friday—and the Entire Holiday

Shopping Season

智能手机、价格对比应用程序、以及团购是如何改变感恩

节和整个假期购物季的。

By Brad Tuttle | @bradrtuttle | November 25, 2011 | 5

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作者：布拉德。塔特|@bradrtuttle| 2011年11月25日

Smartphones—and therefore, deals—are everywhere this holiday season. This means that shoppers should have an especially easy time getting the best price on gifts. Then again, it also means that retailers have an especially easy time reaching consumers and tempting them into making purchases.

利用智能手机购物和团购的买卖正充斥着整个假期。这就意味着买方要能便捷地购得物美价廉的商品；而商家则要便捷地吸引顾客，并且和他们做成交易。

A New York Times story focuses on how all sorts of retailers—online and brick-and-mortar alike—are embracing mobile deals lately. On Black Friday especially, everybody from Best Buy to HSN, Amazon to Nordstrom, is expected to offer special mobile-only deals meant to appeal to shoppers, no matter if they’re lying on the couch at home, at work in an office cubicle, or waiting on lines inside physical stores at the mall.

《纽约时报》最近刊发了一篇聚焦网店和实体店关于手机买卖的报道。尤其是在感恩节这天，所有从百思买到HSN，从亚马逊到诺德斯特姆的商家不论是躺在沙发上的还是呆在家里的，抑或是在办公室或是守在实体店里的，都盼望着消费者往自己的店里跑。

One reason the primarily brick-and-mortar stores are pushing mobile deals is because of the popularity of helpful shopping and price-comparison apps like those rounded up by Techland. These apps, which allow shoppers to scan items and check prices at a wide range of retailers, were already popular among consumers last holiday season, and it’s expected that more and more shoppers will be using them to ensure they’re getting good deals.

Techland研制出了一种价格对比应用程序很受人们欢迎，而这也成了原来的那些实体店推出用手机购物的一大推动力。这些价格对比应用程序可以使消费者浏览很多商家的商品

及价目表，因而自上个假期开始它们就受到了消费者的青睐。现在很多消费者都有可能会倾向于利用这些价格对比应用程序去确保所买的东西是划算的。

Reuters reports how stores like Lowes are arming employees with smartphones of their own, to help workers make sales before a shopper leaves empty-handed:

路透社报道了像洛斯这样的店家是如何给店员配备智能手机，从而使得前来光顾的顾客不会空手离去：

When shoppers are in Lowes stores scanning bar codes with their phones, reading product reviews and checking prices, employees can engage them better using iPhones to track down similar information.

当顾客在洛斯商店用手机浏览商品条纹码、阅读商品评论和核对价格的时候，店员们可以用iphone随时跟进了解相关商品信息。

Staff can also check quickly if products are in stock or if items are available on Lowes’ website or another store nearby, and can often match or beat a price a consumer finds elsewhere via a smart phone.

店员们还可以快速核对商品库存是否有货，核实洛斯的网站是否有条款，或者是否可从临近的商店里获得；店员们甚至还可以利用智能手机跟进商品报价，及时调整商品价格。

Not only do brick-and-mortar stores have to compete on pricing with the likes of Amazon, they’re also facing competition from daily deal vendors such as Groupon and LivingSocial. The annual holiday survey from Discover shows that consumers are increasingly comfortable with the idea of giving gifts purchased via daily deals:

实体店不仅需要同亚马逊这样的网店竞价，还要面临类似Groupon（团宝网）和LivingSocial这样的团购网站的竞争。《发现》年度假期调查发现，消费者正日益青睐通过团购购物：

When asked if they would buy a gift through a group-buying site, more than half, 55 percent, of consumers gave a jolly nod to the idea, up from 22 percent who said the same last year. In 2010, just 6 percent of those surveyed said they had purchased a gift through a group-buying site, which more than tripled in 2011 to 20 percent.

当被问及是否愿意通过团购网站购买商品时，相比去年22%的顾客数目而言，今年更有超过55%的顾客会高兴地表示赞同。2010年，仅有6%的受访者通过团购买过东西，到2011年，这个数字已是去年的三倍，达到了20%。

Increasingly, flash deal and group-buying sites aren’t conceding the idea that Black Friday craze is and will always be a primarily brick-and-mortar experience. The Times notes that the Gilt Groupe is going to offer mobile-exclusive deals on Friday, November

25, starting at 6 a.m.—about the same time that many shoppers will be elbowing for sale merchandise at malls. Normally, Gilt’s flash deals are available beginning at noon daily.

渐渐地，flash deal和团购网站已经不承认感恩节的购物热是专属于实体店的了。《时代周刊》撰文写道Gilt Groupe（限时团购商）正准备推出感恩节手机专享购物活动，从顾客一般去商城购物的时间——六点开始。通常情况下，Gilt’s flash deals则在每天中午时分开始限时团购。

The Associated Press, meanwhile, reports that LivingSocial will offer a slew of national deals starting on Black Friday, and more becoming available on Cyber Monday. The deals include one-year magazine subscriptions for $5 (normally $12) and discounts of 50% or more off products from the likes of Skechers, Verizon Wireless, and OfficeMax.

与此同时，美联社报道说LivingSocial将会在感恩节那天提供很多全国性的团购活动，而且网络星期一那天会有更多。这些团购包括全年的杂志订购，原价12美元，团购仅需5美元。还有很多像斯凯奇、Verizon Wireless通讯公司和OfficeMax这样的商家都会把商品打五折或者更低。

What with all of these options, shoppers can have the surreal experience of browsing the offers and snatching up merchandise from the likes of Amazon, LivingSocial, and Best Buy … all while strolling the aisles of a Walmart. Due to the ubiquity of free-shipping promotions, it’s also quite easy to physically go out shopping, browse goods in person, and make purchases—and never actually have to schlep goods to the register, let alone your home.

因为这些购物网站的发展，消费者可以感受一边在沃尔玛商场漫步，一边在用手机购买亚马逊、LivingSocial、和Best Buy等购物网站上的商品那种梦幻般的体验。由于到处都在搞免运费促销活动，实体店购物也是很便捷的，可以一个人选购商品、下单，甚至无须亲自把商品拖到购物车，只要呆在家等待送货上门即可。

Brad Tuttle is a reporter at TIME. Find him on Twitter at @bradrtuttle. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.

布拉德.塔特是《时代周刊》的新闻报道员。你可以到推特上去联系他，也可以到《时代周刊》的Facebook网页或者推特上参与互动。

Requirements:

1. Compose a summary of the report in around 250 words.

Smartphones make shoppers buy gifts more convenient. They don’t need to go outside, or handling a conparatly huge computer.

After the appearance of Price-Check Apps, it blows a gust of wind in many types of stores, no matter online or in the brick-and-mortar alike. These apps allows shoppers comparing prices in differents shops, thus help them to buy the things they need with the most reasonable price. Moreover, stores like Lowes makes full of this opportunity, and equips its employees with smart phones, so they can follow the shoppers and make some changes immediately, in oder to manage to succeed in the deals.

What varies the idea of shopping greatly is another sort of shopping-- group-buying. People tends to purchase goods through group-buying, for its cheap price. On Black Friday or Cyber Monday, LivingSocial will offer many deals with low price to attract more shoppers, and the on sale time is limited. And more and more retailers find it a good chance to gather money, thus more group-buying websites are expected to appear.

All these methods of shopping and inventions is both good for the buying and sale. The online malls allow shoppers stay at home and waiting for the goods sent to their house; Price-Check Apps makes shoppers get more information of price on what they buy; and the group-buying websites will play a more important role in the future shopping. Of course none of them could substitute any other, but they can exist at the same time, which benefit shoppers more.

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