Hurt by inflation, will the French keep their Christmas purchases while they loosen their budget this summer to go on vacation? Trade promotions around Black Friday, on Friday November 25, will be a test, since the majority of French people usually buy their gifts for the holidays there.
This year, 30% of respondents don’t plan to take advantage of “Black Friday” discounts online, including 9% who definitely are, according to a Toluna Harris Interactive survey for the Federation for Electronic Commerce and Distance Selling (Fevad), published Thursday. November 17th. Reason for protest: purchasing power problems. In all, 37% of them prefer, in the current context, savings, especially the younger (58%) and more modest (40%) groups.
In general, on holidays, More than one in three French people (39%) plan to spend less than in 2021 on Christmas shopping, especially among low-income and rural residents.The study says. The budget for Christmas gifts and preparations comes to an average of 404 euros.
Service sales growth
Admittedly, many will be looking for deals and options on the Internet, but after years of continuous growth, online commerce is starting to lose ground in 2022. In the home equipment sector, sales were down 14.7% at the end of September over a year-on-year (6.5 billion euros, excluding markets), notes the GfK Institute. The first is that while this market, which weighs 26.7 billion euros over twelve months all circles combined, fell by only 0.4%, according to GfK.
Moreover, the total volume of e-commerce (+16.8% compared to Q3 2021) is only due to sales of services (+34%), driven by the tourism and travel sectors. Product sales were down 2% year over year (after -15% in the first half), although they were up nearly 30% compared to 2019.