{"id":372606,"date":"2025-11-11T23:29:27","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T23:29:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/372606\/"},"modified":"2025-11-11T23:29:27","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T23:29:27","slug":"black-friday-sales-set-to-be-biggest-on-record-with-shoppers-spending-billions-on-deals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/372606\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Friday sales set to be biggest on record with shoppers spending billions on deals"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is shaping up to be the biggest retail event of the year, with shoppers already hunting for Black Friday deals.<\/p>\n

Australians are expected to spend a record $6.8 billion over the Black Friday-Cyber Monday weekend, according to research from the Australian Retailers Association (ARA) in partnership with Roy Morgan.<\/p>\n

That is a 4 per cent increase on last year.<\/p>\n

Loading…<\/p>\n

Overall, about 6 million Australians are expected to take part in Black Friday sales this year. On average, they will fork out $804 each.<\/p>\n

Women make up 3.5 million of this group, while men make up 2.5 million.<\/p>\n

“November’s become the new December when it comes to a lot of Christmas purchases, and Black Friday is driving a lot of that activity,” says ARA’s chief industry officer Fleur Brown.<\/p>\n

Ms Brown says many Australians are still budget-conscious.<\/p>\n

“There’s still a cost-of-living crisis out there for many households, and they are looking to get their shopping in around that time to get some bargains for Christmas,” she said.<\/p>\n

But, with recent interest rate cuts, she says, there is a greater sense of optimism.<\/p>\n

“We’re seeing categories like clothing, toys, books, reflecting some of that early Christmas purchasing, also household items,” she said.<\/p>\n

\"Slightly<\/p>\n

Fleur Brown says interest rate cuts have helped boost consumer spending. (ABC News)<\/p>\n

According to Deloitte, participation in Black Friday is also growing among Australian retailers \u2014 with 44 per cent expected to take part this year, up 3 per cent from 2024.<\/p>\n

When is Black Friday and Cyber Monday?<\/p>\n

Black Friday falls on Friday, 28 November 2025, while Cyber Monday is on December 1, 2025.<\/p>\n

However, many retailers have already started advertising Black Friday promotions, weeks ahead of time.<\/p>\n

Warwick Hall is the store manager at JB Hi-Fi in Melbourne’s Chadstone Shopping Centre.<\/p>\n

He says people are planning and researching what they want prior to the sales starting, and heading to the stores with a firm idea of what they want to purchase and how much they are willing to spend.<\/p>\n

“They come in and they’re ready to pull the trigger on what they want,”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mr Hall said.<\/p>\n

“I think a lot of people are shopping for themselves and want to maybe reward themselves. Maybe it’s some turntable and a bit of vinyl, or could be a new TV for the family room.”<\/p>\n

\"Smiling<\/p>\n

Warwick Hall\u00a0says shoppers already know what they want before coming to the store. (ABC News: Patrick Rocca)<\/p>\n

Consumer sentiment shows optimists outnumber pessimists<\/p>\n

Research from the Westpac-Melbourne Institute survey shows consumer sentiment surged in November by 12.8 per cent.<\/p>\n

“This is an extraordinary and somewhat surprising result,” says Matthew Hassan, head of Westpac’s Australian macro-forecasting.<\/p>\n

\"BF<\/p>\n

“November marks the first ‘net-positive’ read on consumer sentiment in the best part of four years,” he said.<\/p>\n

It is the first time that optimists have outnumbered pessimists in years.<\/p>\n

“This is the first time this has happened since February 2022,” Mr Hassan said.<\/p>\n

“Indeed, excluding the COVID disruptions in 2020 and 2021, this is the most positive result in seven years.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The one exception is people with a mortgage. Sentiment dipped 0.3 per cent across this sub-group.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Matthew Hassan says consumer sentiment has risen.\u00a0 (ABC News: Daniel Irvine)<\/p>\n

More consumers use AI to help them shop<\/p>\n

James Johnson, head of enterprise and commercial ANZ at Shopify, works with retailers across the country.<\/p>\n

He says they did a survey of 2,000 consumers and 500 businesses that found many Australians were using artificial intelligence (AI) to help guide purchases.<\/p>\n

\"Smiling<\/p>\n

James Johnson says more retailers are seeing AI-guided traffic to their sites. (ABC News: Patrick Rocca)<\/p>\n

“They’re using AI for product discovery to find the next best products, but also using it to find brands, or to find offers as well,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We’ve seen an uplift where retailers are now seeing seven times the traffic from the beginning of this year to now \u2014 directly to their sites from AI.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Shopify’s Holiday Retail Report also pointed to a shift in mood among both consumers and retailers.<\/p>\n

There has been an uptick in consumer spending on categories linked to cooking, hobbies and home entertaining.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Shopify October data shows an uptick in categories linked to cooking, hobbies and home entertaining. (ABC News: Patrick Rocca)<\/p>\n

Mr Johnson said consumers were also looking at doing “hybrid shopping” \u2014 more than a third (38 per cent) plan to split it evenly between online and in-store this year, while 31 per cent planned to do a majority in-store, and 25 per cent plan to do a majority online.<\/p>\n

He said 50 per cent preferred to shop online for smaller items and head in-store for larger purchases.<\/p>\n

The research also showed almost eight in 10 retailers (78 per cent) said they felt more confident than last year.<\/p>\n

And 76 per cent expect higher sales this holiday season, with planned Black Friday-Cyber Monday consumer spending up $98 year-on-year.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

There is fear another interest rate increase will dampen consumer confidence. (ABC News: Patrick Rocca)<\/p>\n

Will inflation keep rising and lead to rate rises rather than cuts?<\/p>\n

The latest quarterly inflation figures released last month dashed hopes of an interest rate cut this year.<\/p>\n

Both headline and trimmed mean inflation came in higher than the Reserve Bank was expecting.<\/p>\n

The central bank is now expected to keep the cash rate on hold until next year, and some economists even think the next move might be up rather than down.<\/p>\n

“We would be very concerned if there were any future interest rate increases. They would most certainly have an impact on consumer spending,”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ms Brown said.<\/p>\n

“We would not like to see retailers go back into that period of subdued consumer spending that we’ve had for quite a long time now.”<\/p>\n

For the time being, retailers reap the rewards, as Australians continue to splash the cash.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is shaping up to be the biggest retail event of the year, with shoppers already hunting for…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":372607,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[738,179383,171114,179390,179389,64,81,38444,4051,16041,179381,179392,179391,12024,79,179395,179382,179385,37187,2023,179387,49311,4126,72627,2107,179394,179393,179388,67,132,68,179384,179386],"class_list":{"0":"post-372606","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-artificial-intelligence","9":"tag-australian-retailers-association","10":"tag-black-friday","11":"tag-black-friday-deals","12":"tag-black-friday-sales","13":"tag-business","14":"tag-business-news","15":"tag-consumer-sentiment","16":"tag-consumer-spending","17":"tag-consumers","18":"tag-cyber-monday","19":"tag-cyber-monday-deals","20":"tag-cyber-monday-sales","21":"tag-economic-news","22":"tag-economy","23":"tag-hybrid-shopping","24":"tag-jb-hifi","25":"tag-matthew-hassan","26":"tag-online-shopping","27":"tag-retail-sales","28":"tag-retail-trrends","29":"tag-retailers","30":"tag-shopify","31":"tag-shoppers","32":"tag-shopping","33":"tag-shopping-bargains","34":"tag-shopping-deals","35":"tag-shopping-trends","36":"tag-united-states","37":"tag-unitedstates","38":"tag-us","39":"tag-westpac","40":"tag-when-is-black-friday-and-cyber-monday"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=372606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/372607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=372606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=372606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=372606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}