Cyber Monday: UK economy to get boost from busiest ever shopping day
British shoppers are predicted to spend their way to the busiest shopping day in UK retail history today by mopping up over £3.3bn worth of Cyber Monday deals, according to a forecast from one of the UK’s largest savings sites.
If realised, this would mean that the record for the most retail activity in a day would have been broken twice over the course of ‘Black Weekend’, after Nationwide announced that it had seen a record number of purchases made with its cards on Friday.
VoucherCodes, which compiled the analysis in collaboration with GlobalData, said that it expected two fifths of UK shoppers to take advantage of the deals on offer, despite the cost-of-living crisis’ hit on disposable incomes. It also predicted total spending over the course of the weekend to exceed £8.7bn.
Anita Naik, one of the company’s Savings Experts, said: “Although shoppers will be using this time to stock up on presents ahead of Christmas, people will be making much more considered purchases this year.”
Meanwhile, an analysis of thousands of products by buy now pay later provider Klarna, found that 16 per cent of all products on sale in the UK had their price reduced between 17 and 24 November.
But 25 per cent of Cyber Monday discounts were what the company referred to as “fake deals”, meaning that vendors had already increased the product’s price by at least ten per cent in the months leading up to the price drop for ‘Black Weekend’.
Tracking activity on its app, Klarna found customers to be most interested in: clothing and accessories, health and beauty, and home and interior products.