Black Friday and Cyber Monday, recent additions to the UK pre-Christmas shopping calendar, helped UK retailers to report the strongest sales growth in 25 years in the run up to Christmas. E-commerce sales have been especially strong, continuing to drive growth.
'Black Friday price-cuts, embraced more widely by more UK retailers than ever, and discounting played an important part in helping sales, encouraging more customers into stores and online to buy more widely.' Some 71 per cent of respondents reported sales volumes up on a year ago, while 9 per cent said they were down, giving a rounded balance of +61 per cent, well above the +38 per cent that had been expected and the highest balance since January 1988 (+67 per cent).
