Black Friday is big business. Starting the day after Thanksgiving, it was in the late 1980s that this shopping holiday took off. While it remained an American tradition for the next two decades, Black Friday has been quick to spread across the world over the last ten or so years.
The success of Black Friday is due to a combination of bargains, hype, and psychological marketing tactics. It’s almost impossible to resist having a browse of the sales during Black Friday, whether you’re scrolling through Amazon on your phone or braving the crowds by going into physical stores.
When you consider the global popularity of Black Friday and how large companies aggressively push this holiday, it’s easy to wonder just how much is spent on this day. Using figures tabulated by Betway Casino, there’s no need to wonder any longer.
Countries spending the most per person on Black Friday
With everything from bargain videogames to premium smartphones being part of the sales, the amount of money spent per person on Black Friday can be astronomically high.
This is particularly the case in the holiday’s origin country, the United States, where the average consumer spent a whopping $497 in 2020 during Black Friday. That’s the highest average per person than any country in the world. Their neighbor Canada was not far behind, however, with a median spend of $441.
In third place was the United Kingdom. The average shopper in the UK spent $407, and these spending habits have also spread to nearby Ireland, with people splashing out $348 for Black Friday. The United Arab Emirates may have been one of the late adopters of the holiday, but this hasn’t stopped them from catching up in terms of sales numbers. The UAE has the fifth-highest spend per person with $298.
Black Friday global expenditure figures
To provide greater clarity on just how big Black Friday is, you only have to take a closer look at the global expenditure rate. In 2020, shoppers across the world contributed to an incredible $58 billion spend on Black Friday.
Yet that $58 billion isn’t the record in terms of most money spent on this holiday. That honor goes to the previous Black Friday in 2019 where almost $70 billion was received by big and small retailers.
A new consumer holiday emerges
Even though Black Friday was the originator of this type of consumer holiday, it has led to a number of copycats like Australia’s Click Frenzy and El Buen Fin in Mexico. However, there is one particular holiday that has already begun to eclipse Black Friday’s success: Singles’ Day.
Taking place on November 11 each year in China, Singles’ Day, originally created as an antithesis to Valentine’s Day, is a 24-hour festival of shopping. After a relatively modest start where $0.01 billion was generated by Singles’ Day in 2009, the sales numbers have jumped up significantly over the past five years. In 2019, Singles’ Day surpassed Black Friday’s global expenditure amount. In 2020, It reached a staggering $116.6 billion in sales – more than doubling what Black Friday generated.