Last week, the media reported that Black Friday (and then Cyber Monday) delivered a massive hike in consumer retail spending in the heady lead-up to Christmas.

In conjunction with Toluna, global online community panel specialists, we polled over 2,400 UK consumers to repeat our annual Black Friday poll to measure how shopping behaviour compared to last year.

In summary, despite some major retailers (e.g. Asda; John Lewis) opting out, more consumers than ever took advantage of Black Friday promotions (34%; +13% points), especially 16-34 year olds (50%).

With Black Friday promotions creeping in to the days before and after (including Cyber Monday), analysts believe consumer online spend actually outstripped traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ retailers.

It is also worth commenting that the level of negativity associated with the ‘Americanisation of our society’ has fallen for the first time in our annual poll (27%; -7% points) suggesting Black Friday is now becoming an accepted part of UK shopping culture too.

Throughout this week, we’ll start publishing the results of our 2015 Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday, Small Business Saturday and Manic Monday polls.

Black Friday