Boxing Day footfall dip is bad news for UK retail

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
December 30, 2024

Footfall figures have already suggested the hoped-for pre-Christmas rush happened but wasn’t quite as frantic as hoped and now more data is telling us that the appetite for post-Christmas clearance sales isn’t as great as expected either.

The latest figures from Sensormatic’s ShopperTrak Analytics insights platform are showing us that early discounting dented any Boxing Day boost as retail footfall to UK stores faltered, dropping 1.7% year on year on the day after Christmas. That was despite the day delivering a 71.1% increase in shopper counts compared to the daily average.

High streets saw the biggest decline in visitor numbers, down 5.8%, with shopping centres and retail parks also falling. And as has been the case all year, outlet centres were the big winners as their footfall rose 3.2%. Sensormatic said they won out because “shoppers sought discounts on top of discounts”.

Of course, with some key retailers staying closed on Boxing Day (such as John Lewis, M&S and Next), the figures might not be as suggestive of a decline as they first look. However, the FashionNetwork.com team was out and about early on 27 December and was surprised at how quiet London’s Oxford Street was, although it was likely to get busier later.

Consumers are still spending. Total spend between Christmas Day and New Year is expected to top £13.8 billion, as bargain-hungry shoppers continue to snap up deals. But the big question is: will this be enough to rescue the festive season for many under pressure retailers?

“After a sluggish start in December delivered a 3.6% year-on-year festive footfall deficit, retailers have been playing catch-up ever since as they’ve chased critical Christmas trade,” Andy Sumpter, Sensormatic Solutions’ EMEA Retail Consultant, said.  “And this tail-chasing prompted many to launch Boxing Day sales much earlier than usual in a bid to drive pre-Christmas revenues, with some retailers even offering discounts that would traditionally have been held for Boxing Day as early in mid-December.”

That could mean margins being dented when it comes to results time.

The picture of negative footfall was also seen in the data from MRI Software with its retail footfall figures for Boxing Day down 4.9% across all UK retail destinations year on year. This contrasts with 2023 when its figures showed footfall on Boxing Day was 4% higher than the year before with much of this led by high street activity (+8.6%).

It believes the decline in Boxing Day activity “may reflect a shift in consumer behaviour, influenced by the ongoing cost-of-living crisis”.

Again, it said pre-Christmas discounting may also have had an impact. It recorded footfall levels up 18.1% in all UK retail destinations on Christmas Eve this year compared to Christmas Eve last year, “suggesting that many shoppers concentrated much of their spending in a pre-Christmas rush”. 

And with many retailers kicking off their Boxing Day sales online on Christmas Day, shoppers had the opportunity to grab early bargains from the comfort of their own homes. 

The company’s Consumer Pulse Report supported this view and identified that as 53% of shoppers planned to complete at least half of their Christmas shopping online, the trend may well continue into the period between Christmas and New Year.

It’s also interesting to look at MRI’s comparable data from 2019 with Boxing Day traffic down almost 21% this time compared to the last season before the pandemic. Again, this raises a big question. Is such a strong decline a consequence of the shift to online shopping or is it more about cautious consumers and the cost-of-living crisis?

We’ll find out some of the answers as festive season trading updates are delivered in January, but a full picture will only emerge as the weeks wear on and retailers report on their profitability for the season. Meanwhile others, inevitably, are like to face an existential crisis.