Online sales during Black Friday will be lowest ever, says IMRG

Black Friday online sales are expected to grow 2%-3% during the period – defined as November 25 to December 2, 2019 – however, given the ongoing challenges facing retail, the tracker suggests sales could “possibly be flat”.

During December, online retail sales are expected to grow 1%-2%, compared with last year’s growth of 3.6%, which was the lowest month of December on record.

The subdued forecasts have been attributed to several factors including political uncertainty, consumer confidence, heavy discounting periods and bigger spending on leisure and entertainment.

IMRG strategy and insight director Andy Mulcahy said: “It won’t have escaped many people’s notice that 2019 has been a pretty tough year for retail.

“The problems on the high street are well documented, but online sales growth has been very subdued too.

“At the start of the year, IMRG predicted the online retail market would grow 9% in 2019. With nine months’ worth of data now in, the year-to-date figure (January-September in 2019 vs the same period in 2018) is currently sitting at +4.9%.

“Now we are well and truly into the peak trading period of the year, where many retailers expect to make around a quarter of their annual sales in just two months, what are the chances that Black Friday – and Christmas more broadly – are going to bring a turnaround in fortunes?

“In short, it’s difficult at this point to see how the peak trading period is going to be anything other than weak from a revenue perspective and may potentially even be completely flat.”