It seems it IS a “Cautious Christmas” for consumers

It seems that my prediction for a “cautious Christmas” for consumer spending is playing out.  It has been acknowledged that Black Friday this year performed strongly  – helped by being a week later than last year and landing on payday.  Footfall into retail stores increased by +50.7% from the week before and +6.7% from Black Friday 2023, with non-food sales +5.5% higher (BRC). 

But in the subsequent two weeks trading seems to have been lacklustre at best.  Experience has shown that trading plateaus in the week or so following Black Friday, however, a week on week drop in footfall into stores of -9.1% followed by a rise of only +7.5% is exceptionally disappointing. Particularly as it means that footfall over the last two weeks has averaged -3.1% below the same weeks last year,  which was recognised as a pretty disastrous Christmas trading period. In fact footfall into stores last week dropped further behind 2023 than the week before (-3.3% last week vs -2.8%) the week before last. 

Interestingly last week shopping centres fared worse than high streets (-4.7% vs -3.3%), which may well be the result of pre-Christmas socialising supporting high streets, as this is where most restaurants and bars are located, to the detriment of shopping.

So what does this suggest for the final week of the Christmas trading period?  Retailers will need to hold on to the hope that consumers are planning on a late dash to stores to purchase gifts.  Will this lead to pre-Christmas discounting? Almost certainly, and a number of retailers have already started.  On the plus side, with Christmas falling on a Wednesday there is a full week and then two additional days left to capture consumer spend.  We will see the overall performance of Christmas in terms of spending when Beauclair release their results in January. In the meantime, however, we might yet see a Super Saturday on 21st December!