Decline in Boxing Day footfall
Posted on in Business News
Boxing Day's footfall in decline by -1.3%.
Boxing Day falls just weeks after Black Friday and the 22nd of December, the peak trading day before Christmas.
According to Springboard , the last few years have found the footfall on Boxing Day to be 10.0% lower than that on Black Friday. A figure that has remained consistently around 10.0% since 2016, with 2018 demonstrating a 10.7% lower footfall than Black Friday.
Although, 2018 marked a year with a footfall decline that was less than the previous two years by a smaller drip in high street footfall (-0.3%) compared to 2017 (-6.2%) and 2016 (-3.6%).
Both the Association of Convenience Stores (ACS) and Springboard state that the continuous discounting over the year is to amount for the decline in footfall on Boxing Day.
Interestingly, Boxing Day is one of the days in the year with the highest discounts on consumer products yet the footfall is still religiously declining. This could correlate to the growth of exclusive discounting online rather than in-stores which affects the footfall.
Springboard suggests that the decline in footfall is an indication of the importance of Boxing Day as a trading day.
This year, a lot of the footfall that was accounted for on Boxing Day would have been from consumers taking part in a wider variety of leisure experiences including food and drink.
High streets have become so much more than just shopping destinations but destinations of leisure. In parallel to this evolution, the online market space for retail and other forms of leisure, including food and drink, have become more and more prominent within today's society. This could explain the decline in footfall across the UK's high streets as consumers are balancing their time between both in-store purchases and online purchases. This could also account for why the online retail market numbers are rising while the high street footfall numbers fall, consumers are latching onto the lifestyle, be it in-store or online, that works for them.
We'd like to know if you were open on Boxing Day? How was footfall for your business on Boxing Day and over the Christmas period? Let us know in the comments below.
