Shoppers to spend £705m on Black Friday weekend

Warning festive frenzy will be no magic wand for struggling high street stores

Scottish shoppers will splash a record £6.8 billion by Christmas as Black Friday kickstarts spending, but crisis-hit high street chains were warned the festive splurge is not a magic wand to save them.

The Black Friday weekend will see £705 million spent in Scotland.

However, pre-Christmas price reductions of up to 88% are cutting struggling stores’ profit margins to the bone, according to a Centre for Retail Research study for VoucherCodes, based on briefings with 50 major retailers and 1,000 shopper interviews.

Black Friday this week will see £207m spent in Scotland, with Cyber Monday next week seeing a further £252m of goods bought in a four-day spree totalling £705m.

That would be up 6% on last year, said the Centre for Retail Research.

The £6.77bn record spend in Scotland in the six weeks to Christmas Eve will be up 1.2% on last year’s £6.69bn.

But high streets’ share of festive spending will actually fall by around 2% year-on-year to £4.5bn.

Online spending will leap by around 10% to £2.2bn.

Professor Joshua Bamfield, director of the Centre for Retail Research, said: “Retail sales overall will rise this Christmas – but that is due to increased online spending, as high streets’ share of spending will be down.

“The increase in spending over the Christmas period is not a magic wand to

Conditions are tough. BRITISH RETAIL CONSORTIUM

solve the problems of many struggling retailers.

“Black Friday discounts well before Christmas mean lower profit margins.”

The British Retail Consortium said: “There is more competition and higher costs for high streets, with a decline in footfall as consumers shop online. Conditions are tough.”

Picture: PA. A high-lift platform raises up so that a worker can pick items to be shipped at Amazon’s fulfilment centre in Swansea, in the run-up to Black Friday.