Black Friday Statistics in the UK in 2022

Black Friday is a fairly recent tradition in the UK, adopted after Amazon started to offer Black Friday deals to British shoppers in 2010. The tradition of Black Friday shopping dates back to 1960s Philadelphia, when tourists would start their Christmas shopping the day after Thanksgiving, causing a sudden influx of shoppers in the city to give business to the shops. 2022 marks the 12th year of Black Friday shopping in the UK - so how are we preparing for it? How early do shoppers start planning for Black Friday? And how much did the pandemic affect Black Friday over the past two years? We answer all these questions and more in our Black Friday statistics roundup of 2022. 

Black Friday Britain: Everything you Need to Know

Looking for quick facts? Here’s what we found: 

UK shoppers start searching for Black Friday deals as early as July!

• Amazon, Halfords, Molton Brown and AO are the UK’s top Black Friday brands

• Origins is the UK’s top beauty brand when Black Friday rolls around. 

• Covid-19 seems to have had a negative impact on Black Friday’s popularity, with average monthly Google searches for Black Friday-related terms dropping by 39% between 2019 and 2021. 

How Early Do Shoppers Start Preparing for Black Friday in the UK?

So when does the Black Friday anticipation kick in in the UK? Black Friday deals are a fantastic way to go Christmas shopping without eating into the funds, and it’s likely that many people save their Christmas budget for November. To find out more about Black Friday trends in the UK, we used Keyword Finder to analyse the monthly search volume for the popular search terms ‘Black Friday deals’, ‘Black Friday’, ‘when is Black Friday’, and ‘Amazon Black Friday’. We then combined the search volumes for these phrases to find out when people in the UK start to show interest in Black Friday shopping. We used data for 2021, as complete monthly data is not yet available for 2022. 

• People in the UK start searching for Black Friday as early as July, 4 months before Black Friday deals begin!

• Black Friday anticipation really starts in August, when monthly searches jumped up from July’s figure of 29,480 to 47,380.

• People in the UK seem to show considerable interest in late Black Friday deals, searching 61,900 times for Black Friday-related queries in December 2021. 

Which Brands Are Most Popular Amongst UK Shoppers on Black Friday?

So which brands are attracting the most Black Friday shoppers? To find out we analysed search volumes from November 2021 for Retail X's list of the Top 500 brands* in the UK in 2022, followed by the term 'Black Friday'. This enabled us to discover the 20 brands searched for most in the UK in the lead up to Black Friday. 

*The categorisation of these 500 brands was based on 6 metrics outlined by Retail X. Namely, Strategy & Innovation, The Customer, Engagement, Mobile and Cross-channel, Merchandising and Operations & Logistics. 

Rank	Brand	Total Google searches made in the UK in November 2021
1	Amazon	90,500
2	Halfords	18,100
3	Molton Brown	18,100
4	AO	18,100
5	Hotel Chocolat	14,800
6	Mulberry	14,800
7	Samsung	14,800
8	DFS	9,900
9	Vivienne Westwood	9,900
10	Smyths Toys	8,100
11	Costco	8,100
12	Dell	8,100
13	Victoria’s Secret	8,100
14	FootAsylum	6,600
15	Argos	5,400
16	LookFantastic	5,400
17	Office	5,400
18	Levi’s	5,400
19	Mango	5,400
20	Asics	5,400

• Amazon is the most searched-for brand in relation to Black Friday deals, accumulating a total of 90,500 Google searches in November 2021. That’s 5 times higher than its closest competitors. 

• Next up are Halfords, Molton Brown and AO, with an average of 18,100 searches being made for each brand alongside the term 'Black Friday' in November 2021. That puts bike hardware, fragrances and electronics among the most sought-after Black Friday products online.

• Hotel Chocolat, Mulberry and Samsung seem to be the third most popular Black Friday brands, adding chocolate, fashion and phones to the list of top Black Friday products.

Which Beauty Brands are UK Shoppers’ Top Picks for Black Friday?

Beauty products are in high demand across the UK, from name-brand cosmetics to casual everyday makeup products like foundation and concealer. Black Friday can be a fantastic opportunity to get hold of fancy brands or novelty items like expensive perfume - but where are UK shoppers looking for their beauty products on Black Friday? To find out, we used Boots’ list of beauty brands in the UK. We added the term ‘Black Friday’ to each brand name, and then entered these search terms into Keyword Finder to analyse the number of Google searches conducted in the UK in November 2021 for each brand in preparation for Black Friday. We found that: 

Rank	Beauty Brand	Total Google Searches in the UK in November 2021
1	Origins	22,200
2	Estée Lauder	4,400
3	DIOR	3,600
4	Liz Earle	3,600
5	Rituals	2,900
6	Huda Beauty	2,400
7	The Ordinary	1,300
8	NARS	1,300
9	Morphe	1,000
10	Urban Decay	1,000

• Origins appears to be the most popular beauty brand in the UK when it comes to Black Friday deals, with UK shoppers searching a total of 22,200 times for ‘Origins Black Friday’ in November 2021. 

• That’s five times as many searches as the second most searched-for brand in the UK: Estée Lauder. 

• Dior and Liz Earle appear to be the third most popular beauty brands on Black Friday, totalling 3,600 Google searches each in November 2021. 

How Did the Pandemic Affect Black Friday? 

The Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 and 2021 drove many UK shoppers from the high street to ecommerce shopping due to lockdowns and illnesses. It’s reasonable to assume that the online culture of Black Friday shopping was impacted by this - but how much, and in what way? To find out, we repeated our Keyword Finder research for general Black Friday search terms such as ‘Black Friday’ and ‘Black Friday deals’ for the years 2018 to 2021. We left 2022 out of this data due to search volumes being unavailable for October and November. 

• Interest in Black Friday seemed to peak in 2019, when people in the UK searched an average of 418,507 times per month. 

• During the pandemic of 2020 and 2021 the volume of Google searches for Black Friday reduced significantly compared to previous years, experiencing a drop of 39% between 2019 and 2021. 

• The biggest year-by-year decrease was between 2019 and 2020, when Black Friday searches dropped from 418,507 down to 280,045. 

Did the Pandemic Have an Impact on Black Friday Spending? 

So how much does the UK spend on Black Friday deals every year? And did this change over the pandemic? We used Finder.com’s survey and market data to find out.  

• The average Black Friday spend in 2021 was £275, £25.67 less than the average spend in 2020. 

• In 2020, the average Black Friday spend nearly reached £300 (£295.67). 

• That’s an increase of nearly £50 (£44.47) since 2019, despite interest in Black Friday deals appearing to decrease between 2019 and 2020. 

The total amount spent on Black Friday increased from £5.6 billion in 2019 to just under £6 billion in 2020. 

• However, this figure dropped by over a billion between 2020 and 2021, falling from nearly £6 billion down to £4.8 billion. 

Black Friday is a great opportunity to stock up on items and Christmas gifts in the run-up to the holiday season, especially on a budget. For more ideas about the types of Christmas gifts to buy on Black Friday, or to browse for interesting statistics on a variety of subjects, have a look at our blog here.