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Black Friday isn't really impacting retail sales, StatsCan says

December has always been the busiest shopping month, for obvious reasons. But as promotional sales events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday become more and more popular in Canada, it seems logical retail sales would start to climb in November.

According to Statistic Canada, that’s not really happening.

In fact, from 2006 to 2014, retail sales in November and December have decreased slightly in proportion to the rest of the year.

StatsCan says the share of annual retail sales in those months declined from 18.3% of total annual retail sales to 17.8% over that period.

During that time November's share of total annual retail sales stayed virtually the same, edging up only 0.1 percentage points. Meanwhile, December's share declined from 9.9% to 9.3%.

“Looking at total retail sales from 2006, 2011 and 2014, Black Friday does not seem to have affected overall retail sales patterns,” a recent report from Statistics Canada states.

But while overall shopping trends in November show very little change over the past decade, specific subsectors are changing.

Retail sales in November are rising in specific types of stores: clothing stores, electronics and appliance stores, and sporting goods, hobby, book and music stores

StatsCan says there are non Black Friday explanations for why sales have gone up in most of those, but the spike in electronics sales does seem to be Black Friday related.

“Black Friday promotions appear to have shifted some sales from December to November” in electronic and appliance stores, the agency says.

December's share of annual sales at electronics and appliance stores decreased from 16.1% in 2006 to 14.5% in 2014, while November's share increased from 8.9% to 10.1%

This share of certain types of electronics both at these types of stores has grown significantly, from 57.8% in 2006 to 65.5% in 2011 and 64.5% in 2014.

So while it does seem that sales of electronics are picking up becuase of Black Friday, that jump isn’t really enough to make a significant difference in overall retail sales in Canada.



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