Increased Sucess For E-Commerce As In-Store Sales Collapse This Black Friday

By Melissa Cox

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Black Friday, an American phenomenon, is a time each year when you can find deals and discounts for almost any product, that you would not typically find at another time. Due to COVID-19 causing an increase in online sales, there were high expectations for a rise in sales compared to Black Friday 2019, especially for e-commerce which has been rising above the high street shops for a while now. Black Friday 2020 saw differing results in various locations, however, what is clear, is that e-commerce is dominating and will be likely to continue this trend even after the worst of COVID-19.

The UK has adopted the tradition of Black Friday for 10 years now since it was introduced by Amazon in 2010, and it has become a widely anticipated event annually. Black Friday 2020 in the UK was a success online for many large retailers such as John Lewis, who saw a sales increase by 35% from the same period last year. Barclaycard found that online sales hit an all-time high and that by November online transactions had increased by 32%. The Office for National Statistics found that since January, online food sales have increased by nearly twofold and clothing stores have seen a 17.1% increase in online sales.

Despite this success, the overall result of Black Friday in the UK was not quite what was expected. Data from Barclaycard shows that there was an overall drop in transactions by 16.7% compared to 2019, despite the success many businesses experienced online. This is most likely a result of lockdown and non-essential shops remaining closed, therefore for a lot of businesses there were no in-store sales. Analysts have mentioned that the reason for these statistics is due to people waiting on Christmas sales when they are allowed in the store. They have also suggested it is a result of Black Friday sales commencing long before Black Friday, as many retailers introduce sales from the very beginning of November.

With the increased success for e-commerce, there comes the downfall of in-store sales and the high street in the UK. With COVID-19, throughout the year businesses have been struggling to get people in stores. Black Friday is usually a day crowd swarm the high street, however as Black Friday 2020 in the UK was during the nation’s second lockdown, this was not the case. Typical popular places to shop like central London, saw visits to shops fall by 82.9%, with many shops not open at all. The British Retail Consortium estimates that throughout the UK’s second lockdown, shops forced to remain shut have lost £8 Billion in sales combined.

The US saw a similar Black Friday with the domination of e-commerce due to COVID-19 restrictions. However, the US’s Black Friday saw large profits with $9 Billion USD being spent online, up by 21% from previous years. Black Friday 2020 became the second-largest spending day in the US, just behind Cyber Monday last year. This is a result of, “unorthodox Black Friday purchases such as groceries, clothes and alcohol, that would previously have been purchased instore,” Taylor Schreiner, an Adobe Insights director points out.

As people have taken to shopping online due to COVID, Adobe Insights found there had been a 397% increase for online grocery shopping from October averages. As it did in the UK, e-commerce in the US benefitted greatly from Black Friday and saw large corporations’ sales grow by leaps and bounds. By this year’s third quarter, e-commerce sales for Walmart were up by 79%, Target up by 155% and Amazon up by 37%. Also, similar to the UK, online sales began for a number of stores as early as October, so despite many stores still being open, people didn’t have a reason go to in-store for just the one day of discounts there. For the 2020 holiday season, it is expected to see an increase of around 30% for e-commerce sales from last year in the US.

Black Friday 2020 has been extraordinarily successful for those with an online presence, as it has done in previous years, however, the domination does not seem to be slowing anytime soon. France even took action to postpone Black Friday till the 4th of December to give smaller businesses a chance against the online sales from giants like Amazon. It seems that peoples shopping habits are adapting to the digital age, and we will continue to see Black Friday in the future as a predominantly online event.

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