Shoppers took to their laptops and flocked to high streets on Black Friday in what is expected to be one of the busiest retail days of 2023 – but early indications are that this will be a more muted affair compared with previous years.
Sales in cash terms are expected to be on a par with 2022, but prices are higher due to a year of rampant inflation, meaning fewer items will actually be sold over the US-inspired discount period. By lunchtime on Friday, some retailers had seen a slight uplift, but online activity was flat and footfall down more than 5% at shopping destinations.
While there was a recovery in central London, with visitor numbers up by 1.5% on a year ago, regional cities and towns, as well as outer London, all recorded declines in footfall of more than 5% by lunchtime.
The anecdotal evidence suggests trading is in line with expectations that sales will be just 0.4% up over last year, reaching £8.7bn between Friday morning and Monday night, according to analysis by GlobalData for Vouchercodes.co.uk. That compares with inflation of 3.4% on non-food items in October, according to the British Retail Consortium trade body.
No longer a single-day event, the Black Friday sales now start in November and run for several weeks, smoothing out the big dash which first kicked off in the UK a decade ago.
Increasing scepticism about the potential deals on offer and concerns about online fraud have dampened excitement around the event as well as the restrictions on spending money amid the cost of living crisis.
The average discount on items on sale this week was just 1.5% compared with 21 August, according to research by credit firm Klarna.
There was some evidence of better-than-hoped-for spending, with shoppers making a last-minute rush for a bargain that at one point overwhelmed the website of electrical goods specialist Currys.
The Nationwide building society said its members had made 3% more purchases this year by 5pm.
Mark Nalder, Nationwide’s director of payment strategy, said the figures were a “welcome boost for retailers online and on the high street”.
John Lewis said its sales of small electrical goods were up by 31%, led by air fryers and earphones, while toy sales had risen year on year.
Jon Williams, director of commercial operations at the department store chain, said: “The Black Friday period has certainly not lost its appeal with our customers.”
John Lewis and other retailers said that gaming consoles among best sellers amid the launch of latest edition of Call of Duty.
Barclaycard, which has a much broader range of shoppers, accounting for half of debit and credit card transactions in the UK, said the volume of transactions was up by just 1.4% in the week leading up to Black Friday.
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Sales appeared to be proving trickiest online. Delivery tech group Metapack also said online parcel volumes were down in the run-up to Black Friday.
Tom Forbes, senior vice-president at Metapack, said: “We’re seeing consumer confidence remain low, with delivery volumes lower across the board and shoppers needing big bargains to tempt them to buy early today.”
Forbes said part of the issue could be that Black Friday has fallen a week before payday for most workers this year. “This might see deals and promotions you typically see fall this weekend, being extended deeper into December to accommodate that extra pay cheque,” he said.
Andy Mulcahy, at the online retail trade group IMRG, said sales were down by almost 7% on Wednesday on the equivalent day a year ago, after a 2% fall on Tuesday and flat sales on Monday.
Sales have also been down year on year in the two prior weeks.
Mulcahy suggested that with tight household budgets, consumers were being canny with their cash rather than being inspired to spend more.
He said that discount activity by retailers was encouraging people to spend, but only by switching to particularly heavily discounted products rather than increasing their overall shopping budget.
