Black Friday still evolving in UK, discounts spreading into 'warm-up' sales

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Nov 20, 2017

With Black Friday just a few days away, UK retailers are already in discount mode with 80 out of 210 tracked by IMRG already running discount campaigns, and 46 offering cuts of 30% and over.

The industry group for e-tailers is predicting total UK online spend between and November 20 and 27 to hit £7.42 billion, a 15% rise on 2016. But the spread of Black Friday discounts over the eight-day period means that Black Friday itself will see sales rising a lower 9%, to £1.35 billion.

Interestingly too, IMRG said there has been a change of approach from e-tailers this year. In previous years, in the weeks leading up to the event, many sites advertised prominently, often on their home pages, that they would be participating and encouraged visitors to sign up to a newsletter. 

This year notably fewer have taken that approach, with most opting not to mention Black Friday at all in advance of the anticipated peak week.

Why the change? Well, it appears that giving Black Friday such a big built-up could be counter-productive. It seems shoppers hold back from buying in October and early November as they know big discounts are on the way. 

We already know that October and the first weeks of this month were extremely tough for the fashion sector in particular. And IMRG said Monday that the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index has shown site visitors being a little more focused on pre-Black Friday research rather than purchasing. The average October conversion rate for 2013-15 was 4.8%. In October 2016 it was 4% and October 2017 4.4%, so better than last year but still lagging behind those years before the Black Friday habit really took hold in Britain.

Given that Black Friday is entirely a marketing creation in the UK (rather than being anchored around Thanksgiving as in the US), retailers’ approaches to marketing the event are crucial to its success or failure in Britain. And promises of huge best of year’ discounts, have clearly led to the event wielding a strong psychological influence over shopper behaviour.

Andy Mulcahy, strategy and insight director at IMRG, said: “Black Friday has created this idea that there is ‘a time’ to shop in the lead-up to Christmas, but this has resulted in a lull in sales activity preceding Black Friday week. Consequently, many retailers are already running discount campaigns well in advance of the Black Friday week to help stimulate sales.”

But Black Friday has evolved very fast over just a few short years and could this change of tack from e-tailers drive that evolution further? With strong discounts also being see in those Black Friday ‘warm-up’ sales, IMRG said that if shoppers are ale to free themselves from the belief that discounts are restricted to the end of the month, they could begin to adapt their behaviour. That could spur a return to spreading their spend across the month as a whole next year.