Black Friday blues: Unclear consumer spending picture in 2023

Black Friday and Cyber Monday were once American eccentricities like Thanksgiving but have long since become global phenomena. And in that time, analysts the world over have pored over the sales figures of each for clues as to what lies ahead for the economy. 

This makes sense – especially in the US. According to the U.S. Bank, consumer spending is a key driver of growth. So much so, that it accounted for 68% of the States’ national GDP in the third quarter of 2023. If people are injecting money (that they have, not debt) back into the economy, it bodes well for that nation’s cash flow, so to speak.

So, what better time to assess that consumer confidence than on the two days of the year expressly dedicated to spending, when overrun retailers happily share their sales figures and shoppers are surveyed aplenty?

Slimmer pickings

Unfortunately for analysts of those data figures – although, perhaps, more fortunately for the rest of us – a clear trend during 2023’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday was a rise in consumer smarts, who are getting pickier about the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of seasonal discounts.

United Kingdom organisation Which? – a self-styled ‘independent voice for consumers’ – surveyed over 200 Black Friday deals to find that only 15% of the discounts were worth the money, with a whopping 98% the same price or cheaper at other times in the year.

And consumers are noticing. A Black Friday report by Wunderman Thompson Commerce found that, for Black Friday 2023:

Over half (56%) of consumers believe that Black Friday deals are misleading and a further 47% say they were left disappointed with the offers available during last year’s peak shopping period.

The result? In the UK alone, Wunderman Thompson said it expected Black Friday splurging to drop by as much as 50%.

This could well muddy the data when it comes to concluding Black Friday and Cyber Monday figures – and would likely only get more pronounced as consumers get savvier.

Furthermore, it cited ‘cost of living’ as a chief reason for this – a theme which most of Europe, as well as many nations in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, can relate to.

Meanwhile, over in America…

This is worlds away from the picture painted by U.S. figures, which exuberantly reported 2023 as the best Black Friday year since before the pandemic. Adobe Analytics, for example, reported that Americans spent $9.8 billion on Black Friday online alone, up 7.5% from 2022.

However, new data about credit card debt seems to suggest that Americans spent money they don’t have on Black Friday this year.

The latest Q3 U.S. household debt and credit figures showed that the country’s total household debt has reached $17.29 trillion, up 1.3% in the past couple of months alone. This, too, means Black Friday sales figures give an economic picture that’s ambiguous at best.