Black Friday deals helped drive footfall last week as Christmas shopping kicked off in earnest.
The Smart Steps/Retail Week Christmas Shopper Trends tracker for the week to November 30 showed that footfall in regional shopping centres such as Kent’s Bluewater and Gateshead’s Metrocentre experienced the greatest uplift on Friday.
Visitor numbers soared 21% against the average Friday across October and November. Footfall across last week increased 7% against both the previous week and the average week across October and November.
In city centre locations, footfall was up 7% week on week and jumped 10% on Black Friday. However, the biggest uplift came on Saturday, when visitor numbers soared 23%.
The footfall surge came as UK retailers embraced the US tradition of Black Friday, where retailers stimulate festive spending with a raft of discounts the day after Thanksgiving.
Amazon first introduced the concept to the UK in 2010 and until this year it had only been adopted by etailers.
However, this year John Lewis and Asda were among the retailers that launched in-store deals last Friday.
Telefónica Dynamic Insights chief executive Steve Alder said: “Smart Steps analysis shows Black Friday has well and truly arrived in the UK, and regional shopping centres benefited the most.”
There were multiple reports of fights breaking out at Asda shops on Friday as bargain hunters swarmed its stores in search of what the retailer’s chief merchandising officer for George clothing and general merchandise Andrew Moore described as “earth-shattering savings”. John Lewis said electricals sales soared 41.5% last week boosted by the promotions.
Meanwhile, Smart Steps showed that large town centres, which have suffered a mild reduction in footfall throughout November, continued to dip 7% from October’s average last week. However, on Black Friday footfall edged up 1% against the average Friday across October and November.
Smart Steps measures the size and movement of anonymous crowds, taken from aggregated mobile phone data from O2 owner Telefónica’s Dynamic Insights division.
Retail Week will be publishing The Smart Steps/Retail Week Christmas Shopper Trends tracker weekly in the run-up to Christmas.
3 Readers' comments