Boxing Day spending rises, but dwarfed by Black Friday

Spending on Boxing Day this year increased by 3.9 per cent. Photo / Getty Images

New Zealanders spent just shy of $150 million on Boxing Day, well behind the $253m spent on Black Friday last month, though an increase on last year's total.

Figures from Paymark, which processes 75 per cent of the country's electronic card transactions, show $149.8m went through its network on Thursday, up almost 4 per cent on the total spent on Boxing Day last year.

Last year, $139.5m was spent on Boxing Day through 2.5 million transactions.

While there was an increase in spending on Boxing Day this year, retail commentators seem to be right about Boxing Day having lost some of its appeal for shoppers.

On American flash sales shopping day Black Friday, on November 29, Kiwis spent $253m. Including the Saturday and Sunday that followed, a total of $652m was spent.

Paymark noted that Black Friday kicked off the official Christmas spending period, and that Black Friday had proven to be the busier day for spending over the more traditional spending drawcard of Boxing Day.

Spending at supermarkets and liquor stores was up on Boxing Day last year, along with spending at cafes and restaurants. The spend at liquor retailers increased the most this year, up over 14 per cent.

For some retailers, including clothing and footwear retailers, spending on Boxing Day down 7.6 per cent on last year.

Sport equipment retailers and hardware store reported increases of more than 5 per cent.

Spending in the month of December reached new highs this year, with a new peak reached on December 20, according to Paymark.

No official figures have been released on how much was spent on Christmas Eve, but Paymark estimates this would be around $300m - in line with the $297.5m spent on December 20. At its peak, Paymark was processing around 679,000 transaction an hour.

Over the six weeks leading up to Christmas Day, spending totalled $8.8 billion, an increase of 4.6 per cent compared to the same period last year.

Retail NZ chief executive Greg Harford said some Boxing Day retail spend had migrated into Black Friday, though he did not believe the day after Christmas had lost its shine with shoppers.

"My sense is that Black Friday and Boxing Day are going to slug it out for a little while as they each compete to win the most sales," Harford told the Herald.

"A lot of that Boxing Day spend is driven by people who perhaps got given gift vouchers for Christmas, and so they are keen to get out and spend while there are deals on.

"Fashions in retail and sales periods come and go. Twenty, thirty years ago we didn't have Boxing Day sales at all, they have come into their own in the last decade, and what we're seeing now is Black Friday emerging as a strong competitor to that, but I don't think we're going to see Boxing Day sales disappear anytime soon."

Boxing Day sales remained "hugely popular" with New Zealand shoppers, he said.

Harford said he expected the volume of Boxing Day shopping conducted online to have increased significantly this year. "We're seeing more and more customers do Boxing Day shopping online.

"Online shopping has increased eight times faster than in store shopping over the last year and my guess is there would have been a lot of shoppers that would have been making use of the ability to buy online and not head into the shops while they may well have been sitting on the beach and making their purchases on their phones."