Fast online fashion fell towards the end of the festive season

“Consumers turned away from online fast fashion during the Christmas period”. That’s the takeaway from a new report from digital advertising platform Cardlytics.

It analyzed spending via more than 24 million bank cards in the UK between December 21 and 31 – an interesting mix of the pre-Christmas ‘panic period’ and the post-Christmas clearance holiday – and found that individual transactions “went through”.

The average spend per transaction was £33 in 2022, almost the same as in 2021, despite inflation being much higher this time around. And consumers were clearly budget-focused as the biggest spike in spending came after the big day, as discounts were widely applied. Cardlytics said average daily spend rose 18% between Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve, compared to before Christmas.

Comparing 2022 to the spending activity of the past two years, the retail channels that lost for the period as a whole included online fast fashion. Retailers there “experienced a sharp drop in sales, seeing spending fall 42% from 2020 levels as consumers turned to the high street for wardrobe updates”.

This is bad news for Boohoo and ASOS, as the latter has already detailed how challenging the festive trade was and Boohoo will publish its own report this week.

The drop online came as high fashion names such as Zara, H&M and Next saw growth in the period with a 29% increase compared to 2020 figures, although this was not surprising given the restrictive nature of retail of late of 2020 and also understandable consumer caution at that time. .

The report also said consumer spending on electricity fell again last year as shoppers pulled back on spending on big-ticket items. UK electricity purchases have fallen by 20% over the past two years.

And digital markets also saw a 9% drop in spending year-over-year, seeing an increase from 2020 to 2021.

But sports and fitness brands such as GymShark, Sports Direct, JD Sports defied the cost of living crisis, recording a 17% increase in spending over the past two years.