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Black Friday online sales are set to increase by around £2bn this year, with total online sales predicted to rise by 52.9% from £3.8bn to £5.8bn.
Nonetheless, overall consumer spending figures are predicted to be down 12.4% against last year due to ongoing lockdown measures prohibiting high street trade.
A report by VoucherCodes.co.uk for the Centre for Retail Research (CRR) predicted that UK consumers will spend a total of £7.5bn over the Black Friday weekend, down from £8.6bn the prior year.
News of the overall decline comes as 18,000 more retail stores face permanent closure in this year, as lockdown restrictions continue to impact the UK highstreet. Figures published in a report by the Local Data Company (LDC) earlier this month predicted that nearly 15,000 more outlets will be left empty in 2020, compared with 9,169 net closures that occurred in 2019.
Anita Naik, lifestyle editor at VoucherCodes.co.uk, said: “The new lockdown measures have certainly shaken the bricks-and-mortar retail sector for a second time this year, and this year’s Black Friday will be a very different picture to the hoards of shoppers we so commonly associate with the weekend.
“However, as we know, over the past few years there has been a rapid shift to online shopping – with Black Friday Weekend increasingly becoming an online event. This is something that has been expedited by the pandemic, demonstrated by the massive increase of over 50% in online spending year-on-year.”
