27. November 2023
Black Friday marks the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. Data from Monitoring Consumption Switzerland in the merchant category Retail: Other Goods reveals that sales in the Black Friday week increased by an impressive 44% relative to the previous week, reaching the highest weekly turnover for this year. On Black Friday itself, November 24, sales were 2.2 times the level of the previous Friday. The numbers include payments with credit cards, debit cards and mobile payments at the point-of-sale as well as in e-commerce.
Compared to 2022, however, Black Friday sales are lower this year (-10.3%). Comparing the whole Black Friday week (Monday to Saturday 2023) to the same days in 2022, we find that the total turnover decreased in nominal terms by -2.1%. This suggests that turnovers concentrate less on a single day but are more spread out over the week. Yet, in the light of the inflation in the last year, these numbers could be disappointing for retailers.
Figure 1 illustrates these findings by displaying the indexed nominal daily turnover. A value of 100 indicates that the daily turnover is equal to the average daily turnover in the merchant category Retail: Other Goods in November 2022. The indexed value for the Black Friday on November 24, 2023 is 224.4, which is 10% smaller than the value of 250.2 on the Black Friday in the previous year on November 25, 2022. Accounting for inflation between November 2022 and 2023 implies an even larger gap of expenditures in real terms. For important expenditure components contained in the category Retail: Other Goods, such as clothing, the inflation rate between November 2022 and 2023 was 1.5%.[1]
Figure 1: Daily sales in non-food retail with payment cards (debit/credit cards) and mobile payments, November 2020-2022
Note: indexed values; 100 = average daily turnover in November 2022.
Similarly to previous years, the Black Friday 2023 also saw more sales in e-commerce. Figure 1 shows that, on the one hand, the share of e-commerce in the Retail: Other Goods category increased to 24% on Friday November 25, 2022, compared to 13% in the previous week. On the other hand, the share of e-commerce sales on Black Friday dropped from 27% to 24% year-over-year, implying an increase in the share of sales at the point-of-sale on Black Friday 2023 relative to 2022.
What factors may contribute to these trends? The decreased turnover could be attributed to diminished consumer confidence due to rising prices and heightened economic uncertainty. On a positive note, these figures may hint at the enduring appeal of city centers and shopping malls as prime retail locations, despite the looming threat posed by e-commerce.
[1] Source: BFS – Swiss Consumer Price Index in October 2023 (COICOP for clothing and shoes).