The Christmas shopping season got off to a bumper start over the weekend, with record takings recorded as a result of last week's American-style "Black Friday" promotions, and a further £450m expected to go through the online tills today, which has been dubbed "Mega Monday".
John Lewis said its online sales on Friday smashed its previous record for a single day's internet trading by more than 100%, with thousands of orders coming in the middle of the night from customers who preferred shopping to sleeping.
The figures suggest that Black Friday, a US retailing gimmick where stores offer big discounts to kickstart the shopping season, could now become a permanent fixture on the UK shopping calendar.
Today, the buying frenzy is expected to move up another notch. The first Monday of December, which in recent years has become known as Cyber Monday, or Mega Monday, is the busiest day of the year for online sales, as shoppers order early to ensure pre-Christmas delivery.
Nearly half a billion pounds is expected to be spent online on Monday – the equivalent of £312,500 every minute – as more than 7m transactions take place. It is likely to be the busiest day ever for online shopping in the UK, with more than 113m visits to virtual stores as shoppers use their last pay cheque before the big day.
Online retailers expect to have raked in more than £1bn between Saturday and Monday night.
Jeremy Nicholds, Visa Europe's director of commercial development, said: "UK consumers' love affair with online shopping will reach its peak on Mega Monday, when we predict that we will process 7.7m transactions – a 16% rise on last year."
Total Christmas sales are expected to be a staggering £72.2bn – or £351 per person – an increase of more than 2% on last year, according to the Centre for Retail Research. Of that, one third will be spent online.
Catalogue and internet retailer Argos is braced for its busiest online shopping day of the year, and is expecting 3m hits on its website. It is prepared to dispatch 2m packages a day in the runup to Christmas from its 11 regional distribution centres.
Last week's Black Friday promotions – established in the US on the day after Thanksgiving, but new to the UK – have led to an exceptionally strong start to Christmas spending. John Lewis, the only retailer to give a detailed trading update, said that last week's Black Friday event conclusively signalled the start of Christmas trading. It recorded sales of £147m for the whole week, up 18.4% on last year and up 31.4% week-on-week. Online trade was up 35.7% on the year and ended 19.4% higher than its previous biggest week.
Mark Lewis, online director of John Lewis, said: "Any doubt over whether UK consumers are interested in Black Friday has been cast aside as record sales were notched up online and via mobile devices for John Lewis. Looking ahead to this week, we predict that today [Sunday] will see customers go online to continue their Christmas shopping."
Sales from mobile phones rose significantly compared with last year. On Friday mobile orders climbed to more than three times the record for a single day, with huge demand from consumers shopping in the early hours. Between midnight and 8am, sales from mobile devices were up more than fourfold on a normal Friday in November, and breakfast-time buyers – placing orders between 7am and 8am – were up 1,340% .
Many were buying iPads, televisions and PS4s, with one selling every four seconds in the early hours of Friday morning.
In unprecedented scenes, shoppers desperate for bargains caused chaos in Asda stores on Friday as the supermarket – owned by US group Walmart – brought the Black Friday experience to Britain. Customers scrambled to snatch cut-price electrical goods after queueing for several hours outside Asda stores around the country.
Asda said it had sold out of virtually everything: "Black Friday exceeded our expectations and was hugely successful. We sold over 11,000 tablets and 12,000 TVs in the first hour."
But traditional shops and retail centres will not necessarily lose out to the boom in mobile shopping. The rise in the popularity of click-and-collect will see footfall to high streets, retail parks and shopping centres boosted by double digits on Mega Monday, retail expert Springboard has predicted. It expects to see week-on-week footfall increase by 15% across all retail locations on 2 December, and by 2.6% year on year.
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