Christmas Discounting Overtake Black Friday Deals

According to trends observed by auditing firm PwC, retailers will run more promotional activity in the next seven days. It will overweigh the promotional activity that occurred during the Black Friday sales weekend at the end of November.

PwC consumer markets leader Lisa Hooker said “retailers are upping the ante on promotional activity this year in order to clear Christmas stock”.

Lisa Hooker also said that “As we rapidly approach Christmas itself, we are already seeing an uptick in promotional activity as retailers trying to attract customers through their doors and clear festive stock, in particular as last week’s snow and ice put a dent on high street footfall across large parts of the country”.

Last year, we surveyed online retailers out of which 98% had some kind of homepage promotion in the week before Christmas.

“While this year’s trend does not suggest we will reach the same levels, we are expecting to see more bargains for shoppers in the coming week, with more retailers on promotion next week than over Black Friday.”

According to PwC 84% online retailers and 75% of high street stores in UK offered a promotion during this year’s Black Friday weekend – similar levels to last year.

However, one third returned to full price sales after that weekend and around 10% re-launched straight away promotions.

“Consumers have told us that the beginning of December is the most popular time to do their Christmas shopping, so retailers have listened and learnt to schedule their promotions to preserve margin over this critical period,” Hooker said.