Last year, British retail chains embraced Black Friday as a way to get a jump-start on the holiday shopping season. “In a country of polite queuing, some people forgot British patience because they were so excited about special offers”, he said. Some are simply abandoning the shopfest. Kantar Retail estimates that 60 per cent of French people still don’t know what Black Friday is.
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“We have plenty of our own traditions, such as Morris dancing, boarding schools, warm beer and aristocrats, many of which are even weirder than marshmallow-topped potatoes”, said Sarah Vine, a columnist for The Daily Mail. More refined. More, well, British.
“The UK is leading Europe in its adoption of Black Friday”, Roberts said, comparing our take up of the day to the way we have joined in with Halloween celebrations. Its decision to drum up publicity at one London store a year ago backfired spectacularly when camera crews filmed hordes of shoppers barging through the doors and fighting over an inadequate number of cheap smartphones and video games. Asda, which is credited with introducing Black Friday to the country, is eschewing it this year after mayhem in some of its stores last year. “Black Friday in its current guise has gone”, says Asda Chief Executive Officer Andy Clarke.
In an effort to attract the most eager holiday shoppers and fend off competition from Amazon.com Inc, US retailers have increasingly extended their holiday deals by opening stores on the evening of Thanksgiving.
Today sees the return of Black Friday, with Cyber Monday following after the weekend.
A few shoppers arrived early, such as Kevin Regan, a construction manager from Enfield, who came two hours before John Lewis opened in the hope of finding a discounted laptop. That has hurt Black Friday sales in previous years, a trend analysts expect will continue this year. “It’s so destructive because of its timing”, says Richard Hyman, an independent retail analyst. “It’s one of these things that everyone picked up on”.
Argos, the chain that introduced catalog shopping to the U.K.in 1973, is also backing away from the Black Friday scrum. A typical mixture of strong winds and heavy rain across Britain and memories of last year’s scuffles were likely to have encouraged more Britons to shop online this year.
Another explanation is that Black Friday was the day retailers began to make a profit, tipping balance sheets from the red into the black.
Britons splashed out on “Black Friday” bargains on Friday but many opted to go online rather than head to the shops for an event imported from the United States that has become a key feature of the UK retail calendar. Shoppers seem keen, too; researcher ICM Unlimited found 75 percent of British Black Friday bargain hunters plan to buy from Amazon.
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Sensing a populist cause, some members of Parliament, including Jeremy Corbyn, who is now opposition Labour leader, put forward a nonbinding motion in the House of Commons last January railing against large retailers who chose to adopt “the American retail custom of Black Friday”, saying it was an affront to public order and a drain on police resources. After all, they don’t even celebrate Thanksgiving. But Google searches there about the shopfest are up threefold.
