Black Friday sales are likely to be down this year against strong comparables in 2020.
Expectations are more muted for the event this year, with online sales growth predicted to be negative.
Sales could be down as much as 10% year on year, according to the latest data from the IMRG Capgemini Online Retail Index.
The data also shows Black Friday campaigns are beginning earlier, spreading spending throughout November.
While Black Friday falls on November 26, British retailers are running discounts throughout November, whereas in previous years they only ran the same week as Black Friday.
The lockdown in November 2020 prompted Black Friday campaigns to start earlier as consumers turned to online shopping and this trend is set to continue – 33% of retailers are predicted to have Sales by the end of the second week.
In previous years, Black Friday week is ordinarily the peak week for sales but this dropped off last year.
In 2018, Black Friday week took 35% of the revenue out of the four-week period, rising to 41% in 2019. In 2020, this dropped to a three-year low of 33% with each of the other three weeks taking a greater share.
As retailers urge consumers to shop earlier due to supply chain trouble, this may also be the case in 2020.
Black Friday itself is the most popular day to shop the Sales, gaining 22% of revenues from the eight days running from the Monday of Black Friday week to Cyber Monday in 2020.
This could be due to campaign fatigue, as some consumers are confused by multiple deals running concurrently and therefore wish to focus on the day itself.
IMRG Capgemini said: “There’s still a peak within a peak, which is the actual day of Black Friday, but customer perception of when it happens may well become confused. This is due to campaigns increasingly running over multiple weeks and even longer.
“It does seem likely that the share of sales will continue to spread out as a consequence but this year, actual online sales growth for the month of November and Black Friday itself will probably be negative.
“This means that, for the first time, less money will be spent online on Black Friday than the previous year but this does not mean volumes are low – they will be very high still, it’s just that those volumes are rationalising a bit following astronomical growth in 2020.”
Retail Week Prospect data analyst Eleanor Smith added: “The total number of live Black Friday campaigns has continued to rise by an average of 30% since 2017 as British businesses have transformed the discount day into a month-long and anticipated event. Whilst a late-November lockdown saw 2020 campaigns hastily shift into the prior three weeks, the underlying trend of an extended pre-Christmas sales period had been emerging since 2017.
“Campaigns taking place in early November jumped by over 30 percentage points from 2017 until 2020, accounting for a substantial 45% of total campaigns during the Black Friday period. Whilst this level could be somewhat reduced in 2021 with no lockdown in sight, retailers may decide to attract customers across the month to ease the burden on already stretched supply chains.”
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