In the United Kingdom, 75% of retail traffic was on mobile devices in the first nine hours of Black Friday, but mobile’s shared declined to 57% in the afternoon as consumers arrived at work and switched to desktops, according to Salmon Ltd. The e-commerce digital agency predicts U.K. consumers will spend 5 billion pounds ($6.22 billion) online during the five days of Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday.
Thanksgiving is not celebrated in the U.K., and Black Friday as an online shopping holiday is a relatively new import, making its mark in the past three years. Several e-retailers, including two of the country’s largest, Amazon, No. 1 in the Internet Retailer 2016 Europe 500, and Argos (now part of Sainsbury’s, No. 21), started promoting Black Friday deals more than a week in advance, Salmon says. Orders spiked on Thursday, with several retailers having their busiest day of the year so far on Nov. 24, according to Salmon.
“We are seeing two interesting potential impacts of Brexit on Black Friday sales: 1) Shoppers buying now before Brexit-led inflation kicks in. We are sensing that buyers fear retailers may soon be increasing the price of goods to take into account inflationary cost increases. Black Friday prices are currently heavily discounted and savvy shoppers are spending early to make sure they are not hit by sudden increases. 2) An increase in international sales,” Salmon says.
International sales may be influenced by fears about the U.K.’s decision to leave the European Union, commonly referred to as “Brexit,” which voters approved in June, and the decline in the value of British pound versus international currencies, Salmon says. “It is now more economical for overseas shoppers to buy from UK retailers. We have seen increases in international traffic at peak hours across Europe, the US and as far as China,” it says.
About a quarter of Britons shopped on Black Friday—online and offline–last year, compared with around half of Americans, and the percentage of U.K. shoppers is set to drop this time around, according to a survey by consultant Retail Economics. In 2015, British consumers spent 1.1 billion pounds ($1.64 billion) on Black Friday, up 35.8% from 810 million pounds in the same period of 2014, according to data from U.K. e-retail association Interactive Media in Retail Group and web measurement firm Experian.