The figures are in, and you might be surprised just how much money New Zealanders spent on sale items on Black Friday.

Figures from Paymark show we spent a massive NZ$69.7 million at retail shops, excluding food and alcohol.

This was 20 per cent higher than last year’s Black Friday spend. It also overtook last year’s Boxing Day spend, which was NZ$68 million.

Spending on Saturday was up 15.9 per cent on the previous Saturday at the same merchants, says Paymark. Combined spending over the two days was 14.5 per cent higher than last year.

But Paymark says it’s important to keep these numbers in perspective. Last year in the lead up to Christmas, spending peaked at over NZ$82 million each day!

Total spending, including food and beverages, through Paymark was NZ$442.0 million over the two days, up 6.5 per cent on last year.

Total spending through Paymark (including retail and all other items) on Black Friday was NZ$238.2 million, up 8.8 per cent on Black Friday last year.

Paymark is an electronic payments company, covering more than 100,000 terminals and accounting for more than 75 per cent of payments in New Zealand.

PriceSpy says the ‘most-searched’ shopping categories were mobile phones, headphones, and game consoles.

The most popular products were the Sony PlayStation 4 Pro 1TB, Apple AirPods and the Nintendo Switch.

Interesting, PriceSpy says when staff looked into past price information, two out of three products were found to be cheaper at other times of the year.

First published 26 November 2018

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