Woolworths’ Black Friday sales success an early Christmas gift

On the back of a successful Black Friday, Woolworths is gearing up for Christmas, with the supermarket chain expecting to sell 890,000kg of prawns and a million portions of ham.

Woolworths has dubbed its maiden participation in the Black Friday sales a success, with the supermarket chain now gearing up for a Christmas during which food and gift cards are set to be incredibly popular.

Paul Harker, Woolworths supermarkets chief commercial officer, told The Australian much of the supermarket’s offers in the Black Friday-Cyber Monday weekend revolved around “member prices” for its Everyday Rewards loyalty program.

“We saw a lot of customers see the tremendous value in those products, so we saw a lot of members actually participate in buying into those programs and we can see that with scan and tag rates as customers saw value in that,” Mr Harker said.

Woolworths’ offers through Black Friday included large discounts on big-ticket grocery items.

The supermarkets boss said that in the past Woolworths had “tinkered” with a few Black Friday offers but this year decided to fully participate in the weekend – which is bracketed by Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

The Australian Retailers Association believes Black Friday-Cyber Monday delivered total sales for the sector of $6.36bn, up 3 per cent on last year.

“We have tinkered with it in the past, so we had some general merchandise offers in the store but we just thought there’s a lot of hype and activity and customers are doing a lot of searching online for great value, so it would be remiss of us not to participate in that,” Mr Harker said.

“I think you’ll look at the offers we had, they were bigger ticket items. So we had 50 per cent off vitamins as part of the sale, or Finish dishwasher tablets, and the ones that resonated the most clearly were bigger ticket items for customers,” Mr Harker said.

Woolworths expects to sell 890,000 kilos of prawns in the lead up to Christmas – with 80 per cent of fresh prawns sales taking place on December 24th and the 25th.

But after the party comes the hangover, and for many discretionary retailers the boom in Black Friday sales often means a slightly quieter Christmas as consumers used that sales promotion to pull forward gift purchases.

For supermarkets that won’t be the case, with this year expected to be a Christmas and New Year that is dominated by more people eating at home, socialising with friends and family, rather than dining out at restaurants as cost-of-living pressures tighten household budgets.

Woolworths believes that in the lead-up to Christmas, meat will be the centrepiece of most people’s festive spreads and Woolworths expects to sell one million portions of ham and 74,000 fresh whole turkeys in the week before Christmas.

It expects to sell 200,000 frozen turkeys in the two weeks leading up to Christmas, 400,000kg of fresh whole chicken during Christmas week, 500,000kg of lamb leg roast in the two weeks before Christmas and 1.5 million kilos of pork roasts through December.

For many seafood is the “go-to” meal and Woolworths expects to sell 890,000kg of prawns in the lead-up to Christmas – with 80 per cent of fresh prawns sales taking place on December 24 and 25.

Internal Woolworths research also shows that gift cards or gift vouchers are the top gift people plan to give (44 per cent of respondents in a survey) with 47 per cent hoping to receive a gift card under the Christmas tree.

“We are still expecting a big Christmas. If you look at the items that worked well and probably where we are seeing customer behaviour is non-food, either taking advantage of great deals and stocking up, and then obviously more discretionary areas like general merchandise where people are being a little bit more cautious so that they’ve got money available to obviously participate in the (Christmas) food occasion,” Mr Harker said.

“We are seeing obviously from a food perspective, apart from general Christmas confectionery, early sellers that are things that people can buy every week and put in their pantry. We are seeing the food occasion at home certainly growing … so we are feeling really positive and we think the food occasion is probably bigger and will compensate for some more discretionary areas of the store.”