Black Friday and Cyber Monday kept shoppers away from stores last week as footfall fell 2.7%, according to data from analyst Springboard.
Consumers opted to snap up bargains online instead of heading out to shop, with the decline driven by a significant fall in visitors to high streets and shopping centres.
According to Springboard data, there was a 4.2% dip in people pounding the high streets and a 3.4% fall at shopping centres between Monday November 30 and Sunday December 6.
Retail parks bucked the general trend, reporting a 2% in footfall rise year on year although it is a considerably smaller rise than the same week last year, which recorded a 3.7% year-on-year increase in activity.
“The volume of activity in retail stores in the week following Black Friday weekend has dipped further on the back of strong activity in the ecommerce space,” said Diane Wehrle, marketing and insight director at Springboard.
“For the first time this year, the Black Friday long weekend was an online shopping experience for consumers, and it appears that click-and-collect opportunities have not generated the uplifts in footfall that some retailers may have hoped for.
Wehrle added online is expected to continuing impacting on footfall further into December but, with online shopping cut-off dates around December 18/19, the traditional spike in footfall on December 23 is still possible for last-minute buying.
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