A look into consumer behaviour on Black Friday

A report on the poll conducted by our retail and leisure team

Over the weekend, our team asked our social media followers how they would be participating in Black Friday. The results are interesting and match the shopping trends reported by Barclaycard.

Barclaycard reports that the amount spent on Black Friday purchases dropped by 12% compared with 2017. This was despite an increase in the number of transactions, indicating that people have been making a higher number of less expensive purchases and small treats, rather than high end purchases.

In our own poll, only 7% of respondents said they would be buying big price home and electrical goods, while 41% said they would be buying Christmas gifts and 9% said they would buy fashion, cosmetics and general merchandise.

Retail analysts Springboard report that online sales increased by 47% this year, while high street footfall was down 6.4% and shopping centres saw a decline of 9.1%.

In our poll, 51% of respondents said they would only be making purchases online, while just 3% said they would shop on the high street and only 1% would visit a retail park.

One of the issues we wanted to understand from our poll was whether Black Friday was still having an impact on the trading period: while 39% of our respondents said they would not be getting involved in Black Friday at all, for those who do, online is definitely the preferred method for shopping.

William Juckes, joint head of our retail and leisure team said “It’s interesting to see consumers continue to spend on Black Friday. The responses to our poll highlight the importance of online sales as consumers move to spending more online and move away from the traditional high street experience’’.