Boxing Day and Black Friday slug it out for top billing with shoppers
There may have been queues before opening time at some malls on Boxing Day, but New Zealanders spent just shy of $150 million, well behind the $253m spent on Black Friday last month — though an increase on last year’s total.
Paymark, which processes 75 per cent of the country’s electronic card transactions, said Black Friday, which began the official Christmas spending period, had proven to be the busier day for spending over the more traditional Boxing Day spend.
Its figures show $149.8m went through its network on Thursday, up almost 4 per cent on the $139.5m spent on Boxing Day last year.
Retail commentators noted Boxing Day seemed to have lost some of its appeal for shoppers.
On Black Friday, November 29, Kiwis spent $253m. Many sales extended to the weekend and a total of $652m was spent over the three days, with about 90 per cent of that spent in physical shops. Some Boxing Day sales also last several days so final figures are yet to be calculated.
However, some sectors still fared pretty well on December 26 with Kiwis keen to eat, drink and be merry.
Spending at supermarkets and liquor stores was up on Boxing Day last year, along with spending at cafes and restaurants. The spend at liquor retailers increased the most this year, up more than 14 per cent.
But it seems a new summer outfit or shoes wasn’t as high up the priority list with Boxing Day spending at clothing and footwear retailers down 7.6 per cent on last year. However, sporting equipment retailers and hardware stores reported increases of more than 5 per cent.
Spending during December also reached new highs this year, with a new peak reached on December 20, according to Paymark.
No official figures have been released on how much was spent on Christmas Eve — traditionally a busy shopping day. But Paymark estimates it will be around $300m, in line with the $297.5m spent on December 20. At its peak, Paymark was processing around 679,000 transaction an hour that Friday before the Christmas holidays began for many.
Over the six weeks leading up to Christmas Day, spending totalled $8.8 billion, an increase of 4.6 per cent compared with the same period last year.
Retail NZ chief executive Greg Harford said some Boxing Day retail spend had migrated into Black Friday, though he did not believe the day after Christmas had lost its shine with shoppers.
“My sense is that Black Friday and Boxing Day are going to slug it out for a little while as they each compete to win the most sales,” Harford told the Weekend Herald.
“A lot of that Boxing Day spend is driven by people who perhaps got given gift vouchers for Christmas, and so they are keen to get out and spend while there are deals on.
“Fashions in retail and sales periods come and go. Twenty, 30 years ago we didn’t have Boxing Day sales at all, they have come into their own in the last decade.
What we’re seeing now is Black Friday emerging as a strong competitor to that, but I don’t think we’re going to see Boxing Day sales disappear anytime soon.”
Boxing Day sales remained “hugely popular” with New Zealand shoppers, he said, and he expected the volume of shopping conducted online to have increased significantly this year.
“Online shopping has increased eight times faster than in-store shopping over the last year and my guess is there would have been a lot of shoppers that would have been making use of the ability to buy online and not head into the shops.”
About 8.9 per cent of New Zealand’s total retail spend is conducted online, and this percentage is growing — it is forecast to be closer to 10 per cent in line with Australia in the next couple of years.
“[People] may well have been sitting on the beach and making their purchases on their phones.”