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Black Friday lands during America’s Thanksgiving weekend with shopping discounts on everything from smartphones to kitchen appliances. It’s truly a shopper’s feast.
In recent years this shopping extravaganza has also become a staple of the Australian retail calendar and the perfect opportunity to score a deal ahead of Christmas.
For this report, Mozo surveyed over 2,141* Australians about their Black Friday intentions: how many are shopping in the sales, what they’ll buy, how much they’ll spend, where they’ll shop, what they’ll pay with, and whether they think their Black Friday purchases will be stuffed into Christmas stockings in time.
Close to half of Australians (45%) shop in the Black Friday sales to check off gifts from their Christmas wish list.
Almost 1 in 3 Australians (29%) are even more prepared for the festive season, completing their Christmas shopping during sales periods all year round (including Black Friday).
The data showed age influenced shopping habits more than gender, with women only slightly more likely to shop with a view to Christmas (31%) than men (27%), but close to half of Australians (45%) aged 78-95 do most of their shopping for Christmas in the sale periods.
The most popular items for Australians to buy during Black Friday sales are:
Take a look at any Black Friday related content online and you’re likely to see why clothes are the number one purchase choice in the sales.
Clothing brands such as Berlei, Culture Kings, H&M, Bonds, Myer, and The Iconic all offer significant deals during this sale period.
Tech is also a popular shopping category, as major tech brands offer double digit discounts including Sony, Microsoft, Dyson, Samsung, HP and in some instances even tech heavyweight Apple.
Clothes are even more popular among 2023 Black Friday shoppers (41%, up 5% on last year), and if you need some nice shoes to match? They’re also more popular in 2023 (25%, up 2%).
Buying smartphones in the sales (18%) seems to be a societal imperative, but this could be due to the timing of the Apple tech releases that usually occur just before peak shopping season.
Laptops (18%) were also in the top five most popular purchases for two years running. However, this year, homewares (18%) jumped to beat the fifth most popular purchase choice of 2022, vacuum cleaners.
This year, 1 in 3 Australians (30%) plan to spend between $200 - $400 in the Black Friday sales, likely showing the preference for low-cost tech, homewares, clothes and shoes.
1 in 4 Australians (25%) will be forking out $400 - $1,000 on the pre-Christmas deal day, which may include the more expensive tech and higher-end clothing and shoes.
Notably, in 2022 and 2023, less than 1 in 10 shoppers said they would spend more than $2,000 in the Black Friday sales, highlighting just how much Black Friday has become synonymous with picking up a genuine bargain!
As the cost of living continues to rise, it seems most Australians are looking to borrow for Christmas, with 2 in 5 (41%) opting to pay for the Black Friday shopping fun with credit cards.
It’s worth noting that when it comes to shopping in the Black Friday sales with a credit card, 4% of Australians will be using a ‘secret credit card’ and 6% will be using their partner’s.
Concerningly, the research also showed that 37% of Australians paying with credit cards do not pay off their balance in full every month, and that number skyrockets to 46% for those using their partner’s credit cards.
Debit cards (36%) were the second most popular choice for spending, and despite the drop in popularity of Buy Now Pay Later accounts, 22% of Australians will be using this method to cover their purchases.
Surprisingly, most Australians prefer to spend their Black Friday time at shopping centres (38%), rather than from the comfort of the couch.
Even younger bargain hunters who might normally favour online shopping like to hang out in the mall, with 49% of Gen Z (aged 18-26) and 44% of Millennials (aged 27-42) opting to visit stores in person this Black Friday.
Black Friday retailers might be also happy to hear that even more people are looking to shop in-store this year, up to 38% on last year’s 34%.
Visiting specific brand websites was surprisingly low on the list of most shoppers, with just 13% of people favouring that way of hitting the Black Friday sales.
Australians’ worries around home delivery in the Black Friday sales seemed to have lowered in recent years, maybe as a result of dawdling delivery times during the pandemic.
Mozo research showed 1 in 3 shoppers (35%) don’t worry about delivery time, with most expecting their goods within 3-6 days (30%).
As you might think, the younger crowd has especially high expectations when it comes to delivery (maybe that’s why they prefer to go straight to the mall) with 1 in 5 Gen Z respondents expecting delivery in 1-2 days.
This is a far cry from the older generations, as Millennials (16%), Gen X (13%) and Boomers (7%) remain less optimistic about speedy delivery in the Black Friday sale period.
Despite almost half (45%) of Australians admitting they will do most or some of their Christmas shopping at the Black Friday sales, delivery times remain the biggest concern for those who like to get their shopping done early (11%).
Sadly, the research also showed that, as the cost of living bites, many are shifting festive spending habits.
A whopping 1 in 6 (17%) said they would not be shopping at all for Black Friday sales or Christmas gifts, as they “can’t afford it” this year.
*Mozo.com.au commissioned a nationally representative consumer research survey via Researchify, surveying 2,141 Australians, aged 18 years and over, from 30th August to 11th September 2023.
This report was compared with a previously commissioned nationally representative survey of 2,297 Australians conducted by Researchify in August 2022 to get the year on year comparisons.