- AI is reshaping shopping as South Africans use conversational search to find deals and compare products.
- Black Friday is now a season, with promotions starting months earlier.
- Omnichannel retail matters, linking online discovery with physical stores.
- Fast fulfilment is expected, making same- or next-day delivery and click-and-collect essential.
- AEO can improve visibility in AI-driven shopping through structured product data, pricing and stock information.
South Africans have changed the way we shop. While economic pressure may be forcing us to watch every penny, we have wholeheartedly embraced AI, which is now acting as our trusted shopping assistant. However, many retailers haven’t even begun to shift their digital approach to accommodate the changes, leaving gaps for challenger brands this retail peak.
What’s changed since last Black Friday and Festive Season?
The local retail landscape has seen a significant increase in new market entrants, and Chinese juggernauts, Temu and Shein are now dominating generic keywords in the search results. This is forcing local brands toward long-tail, high-intent search terms to maintain expected conversion levels.
Another shift has been the return of brick-and-mortar stores to centre stage alongside e-commerce, rather than being treated as an afterthought.
Instead of campaigns focused almost exclusively on paid digital media, retailers now have to think in genuinely omni-channel terms, including how online advertising can actively drive traffic to physical stores, support specific locations and bridge the gap between browsing on a screen and buying in-store.
Most importantly, Black Friday itself has stretched from a single day or weekend into a long season that effectively kicks off in early October, with some brands even pushing Black Friday flash offers as early as August.
How will the economy impact peak?
This year inflationary pressure will see more pantry loaders hunting for bulk essentials, household staples, and genuine value over impulse luxury buys. What’s more, many consumers are tracking prices weeks in advance, and will be relying heavily on Buy Now Pay Later options at the checkout.
Hyperconvenience a baseline offering
Hyperconvenience has become the new battleground in peak retail season, and same-day or next-day delivery is no longer a differentiator, it’s simply the baseline expectation. Retailers still working on five-to-seven day delivery windows are effectively disqualifying themselves unless they can compensate with dramatically better pricing.
How will AI search impact how people shop this peak?
South Africans have become expert AI users. We rank among the top countries globally for the length and depth of prompts, meaning people are treating AI like a trusted shopping assistant and expecting it to surface the best-value and most convenient options on their behalf.
Instead of clicking through hundreds of links, shoppers can be more specific using conversational queries to find curated product shortlists, live pricing, and instant deal verification. While this zero-click behaviour reduces traditional organic website visits, visitors arriving via AI referrals carry far higher purchase intent and convert faster.
Most retailers aren’t prepared
Despite the shift, most local online stores still rely on traditional keyword strategies, leaving them invisible in AI recommendations because their pages lack direct Q&A formatting, machine-readable inventory APIs, and transparent price data.
As a result, a massive advantage exists for the small group of local retailers actively implementing dedicated Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) strategies before this peak season.
Fortunately, with a few strategic actions, retailers can, even at this stage, make a material impact on their 2026 peak performance
10 actions that deliver an immediate advantage this Black Friday and festive season
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Create permanent deal destinations. Maintain year-round Black Friday or sale landing pages to build search visibility, retain domain authority and capture deal-seeking searches from as early as September.
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Extend the sales window. Shift from a single Black Friday event to a Black November or Black Friday weekend campaign, giving consumers more time to shop around staggered paydays and reducing reliance on costly peak-week advertising.
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Make value effortless to understand. Use clear discounts, transparent bundle savings and free or low-cost delivery where possible. Avoid complicated offers that force shoppers to calculate savings at checkout.
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Put flexible payment options upfront. Display Buy Now, Pay Later services such as PayJustNow and Payflex alongside other local digital-payment methods, on product and category pages, not only at checkout.
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Improve product discoverability. Keep Google Merchant Center feeds accurate and up to date, with strong product titles, specifications, GTINs, images, reviews, live pricing, stock availability and realistic delivery information.
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Use product and offer schema. Add complete Product and Offer schema markup so search engines and AI-driven discovery tools can surface reliable details on price, availability, delivery timeframes and checkout options.
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Make fulfilment reliable and visible. Shorten delivery timelines where possible, provide dependable click-and-collect, and communicate delivery promises clearly throughout campaign messaging.
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Build first-party audiences before the rush. Use loyalty programmes, early-access registrations, VIP previews and sign-up incentives to grow an owned audience that can be reached repeatedly at a lower cost.
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Tailor creative to each platform. Build channel-specific Peak content: YouTube for awareness, Meta across the purchase funnel, TikTok for excitement and discovery, and Google for high-intent shoppers ready to buy.
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Focus on convenience as well as price. In a time-pressed market, retailers that make product discovery, payment, collection and delivery simple, fast and predictable are more likely to win the sale.
Despite the grim economic climate, this peak is likely to track the upward trend of the last few years. Who captures that spend, however, depends on what action is taken in these next few weeks.
Zaida Kamish is business unit director and Malcolm Peters is head of SEO at Incubeta.
