Last week Roy Morgan’s consumer confidence survey found confidence rose 0.4% ahead of the Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales weekend (24th of Nov to 27th of Nov). Black Friday & Cyber Monday is a tradition from the US where online retailers offer big discounts however, we are seeing brick and mortar retailers also take up this marketing initiative offering discounts to shoppers in a bid not to miss out on revenue. Research by Australian Retailers Association estimates shoppers will spend $6.36 billion over the 4 days of Black Friday/Cyber Monday, up 3% on last year. The sales event brings forward spending on Christmas gifts as shoppers take advantage of the discounts on offer ranging anywhere from 10% up to 60% storewide. Retailers say online sales on Friday were up 10-25% on last year with the shopping event becoming bigger than Boxing Day sales and some retailers were offering early access to Black Friday thereby extending the promotional period of the event. 

However, the bigger picture is consumer confidence has now had 42 weeks where it is below 85 and is 6.9 points below the same week last year. 55% of Australians are saying they are worse off financially compared to last year in contrast to 19% who say they are better off than last year, with confidence declining sharply for those who have a mortgage (due to rising interest rates and more people rolling off low fixed interest rate loans to higher variable rate loans).