A quieter Boxing Day is expected this year despite freedom from pandemic restrictions as the cost-of-living crisis continues to squeeze shoppers’ budgets.
Spending is expected to hit almost £3.8 billion on Monday (26), according to research by GlobalData for Vouchercodes. The figure is down almost 4 per cent on last year, which was already a tough one for retailers because of fears of the Omicron variant of Covid-19.
That revenue figure indicates a big dive in the volume of items bought, given that inflation is running at more than 10 per cent. More than a third of this year’s Boxing Day bargain hunting is expected to be done online, where £1.25bn will be spent.
Adding to the dampener on the traditional post-Christmas shopping spree and hig street footfall is the fact that multiple major chains – including Aldi, Iceland, John Lewis, Pets at Home, Poundland and Beaverbrooks – will be closed on Boxing Day.
Since Christmas Day falls on a Sunday this year, there will be an extra bank holiday when the shops are open – on Tuesday 27 December – meaning the bargain hunting can be spread over more days, further diluting the significance of December 26.
“The combination of Black Friday and the vast amount of discounts we have had throughout the industry has brought a lot of those potential Boxing Day sales forward,” Richard Lim, an analyst at Retail Economics, said.
However, Lim added that for those in search of bargains, retailers were likely to be discounting heavily in an effort to clear stocks which were ordered at the beginning of the year when “conditions looked much rosier”.
“The Boxing Day and January [price cuts] will be deeper and much more widespread than normal because retailers are going to be desperate to covert stock into cash and shore up balance sheets as we go into a difficult situation with a recession in 2023.”
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