Only consumers who did their homework beforehand and checked prices to see if Black Friday prices are really discounts, benefitted today.
Despite consumers in all income bands in South Africa suffering from financial stress because their expenses often exceed their incomes, consumers were still queueing to spend their money on Black Friday.
According to the Ozow Black Friday dashboard, one consumer already spent R340 000 on one single transaction by 17:00. The average transaction value was R490.27 by 17:00, while the most transactions by one consumer using Ozow to pay was 26.
The top three transactions by amount were R834 800 where one consumer paid in 15 transactions, followed by R390 700 spent in 21 transactions and R340 000 spent in one transaction. The most transactions so far by one individual were 137, followed by someone else with 91 transactions and another with 75 transactions.
According to the Peach Payments Black Friday dashboard, 301 760 transactions were registered by 17:00 and the biggest transaction was for R267 240.
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This is what people are buying on Black Friday
According to the Discovery Bank Black Friday dashboard, the average local in-store card transaction value was R544, while the average online card transaction value was R1 060. The largest single card transaction was for R400 200.
The top stores by total value where consumers spent their money in-store were Woolworths, Checkers, Pick n Pay, Dis-Chem, Spar, Clicks, Makro, Hirsch’s, iStore and Builders Warehouse. Online the top stores based on value were Takealot, Amazon, Checkers Sixty60, OneDayOnly, Makro, Woolworths Dash, Superbalist, Temu, Bash and iStore.
Consumers using their Discovery Bank cards spent their money on food and drink (19%), recreation (14%), home (12%), transport and travel (11%0 and health and personal care (10%). By the number of purchases, they spent on food and drink (43%), transport and travel (15%), health and personal care (8%), recreation (7%) and home (5%).
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Black Friday with super discounts?
Professor Bonke Dumisa, an independent economic analyst, says Black Friday is a day when South Africans and Americans go wild trying to maximise on super discounts that the retailers say they are offering today.
“Good luck, many of those discounts may be genuine, but some of them are simple gimmicks where they are simply selling those goods at their normal prices yet marking them as “Super Discounts”.
“However, in general, Black Friday does play a positive economic role in South Africa because it always boosts the retail trade figures for the month of November and usually lifts the gross domestic product figures for the fourth quarter of the year.”
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What consumers say about Black Friday specials
Citizen readers who responded to the earlier report about how much people are spending on Black Friday said:
“Shops crazy by 10.00 am. Glad to be out of there! No specials really on essentials!!”
“The billions paid out from the two pot retirement system has now been spent, whilst the only ones laughing are Sars and the retail sector.”
“Glad now, cry long tears afterwards.”
