UK shoppers to spend £10.2bn in Black Friday sales, Gen Z embrace tech but like to shop physically

UK shoppers are set to spend £10.2 billion in the Black Friday sales, a new prediction from Barclays has claimed. It said almost half of consumers plan to shop in the sales, spending £430 each on average.

That said, a majority of UK adults are sceptical about whether Black Friday deals are real, while 44% no longer look forward to seasonal sales as much as they used to.

Other attitudes are changing too with more consumers embracing tech and Gen Z in particular intending to use AI to deals, three times higher than older generations.

In fact, overall UK consumers seem to be somewhat conflicted about their attitude to the giant sales event, with their enthusiastic use of technology going alongside an interest in physical shopping and scepticism about deals running concurrently with a determination to find the best ones and dedicate extra cash to them.

The Barclays Consumer Spend report combines hundreds of millions of customer transactions with consumer research, and says the predicted per capita spend of £430 is £91 more than last year. And with 43% on the hunt for deals, that’s up from 37% in 2024), rising to 76% among Gen Z.

One in four (26%) have been saving money to spend during the Black Friday/Christmas sales period, which, combined with pre-Autumn Budget jitters, contributed to weak spending in October, (Barclays spend data shows retail recorded its steepest fall since November 2024).

As for what people will be buying, it looks like many are being fairly sensible with their cash. Of those participating in Black Friday, 45% plan to pick up Christmas gifts at a discount and 19% will prioritise essential purchases over luxury items. Popular planned purchases include clothing (39%), electronics (28%), and beauty products (24%), which could suggest both a focus on finding everyday essentials at a discount as well as splashing out on some non-essentials.

Barclays said its own data shows that Black Friday 2024 (29 November) was the busiest day of the year for transactions, with retail volumes up 83.7% in comparison to the daily average. Will this happen again in 2025? It’s hard to say. While 29% still consider the annual event as the best time bag a bargain, “sales scepticism is beginning to set in”. 

We’ve already said that 44% don’t look forward to the seasonal sales as much as they used to. Some 43% plan to shop but as many as 68% are doubtful about the real value of Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, and 65% believe such sales events encourage unnecessary spending. We still don’t know whether the scepticism will overcome their interest in bagging a bargain if the right price and the right product converge.

So what about that trend towards using AI to find the best deals? Overall, only 8% of UK adults will use tools such as Gemini and ChatGPT to source and compare deals, but for Gen Z, it’s 17%. And across all age groups, 13% believe AI tools are more effective than traditional search engines when it comes to deal hunting. The mainly young age of its proponents suggests use of this technology as an aid to sales shopping will increase as each year goes by, especially as the technology self improves.

But while Gen Z is in the vanguard of those using AI, they’re also the ones who are most fond of shopping old-school — that is, in physical stores.

Across all age groups, 69% of those shopping this Black Friday plan to shop online, compared to the one in three (34%) who plan to shop in-store. Younger shoppers are most likely to shop in-person, at 40% for those aged 18-27. By contrast, Baby Boomers (aged 60-78) are the most likely generation to browse the sales online, at 81%. And even though they like physical stores, social e-commerce platforms such as TikTok shop, are set to be a popular choice for Gen Z shoppers, at 45% – three times the 15% for shoppers aged 28 or over.

Of those planning to shop in-person, over half (55%) will visit shopping centres, 39% local high streets, and 28% their closest major city. The most popular reasons for shopping in-store on Black Friday are assessing product quality in person (35%), discovering unexpected deals (27%) and avoiding delivery costs (25%).

Barclays also said the physical destinations that saw the biggest Black Friday boost in 2024 (a week-on-week uplift in spending) during last year’s season were Gunwharf Quays, Merry Hill and Bluewater among shopping centres; Livingston, Worcester and Colchester among local high streets; and Bath, Exeter and Leeds among cities.