Well here’s a surprise. After Boxing Day footfall proved weak, and Friday began slowly in some locations, the full day actually went with a bang with shoppers getting their groove back.

Data from MRI Software showed that footfall on 27 December was up 14.2% year on year, with high streets surging by 20.2% and shopping centre up 12.7%. Retail parks were up only 2.7%.

It all suggests that consumers preferred to stay home and relax on Boxing Day. Or maybe they were shopping online instead. And of course, the fact that stores like Next, M&S and John Lewis remained closed on the day after Christmas, meant no snapping up bargains there until the next day.

So what actually happened on Boxing Day and how weak was it compared to the day before?

Footfall figures had already suggested the hoped-for pre-Christmas rush happened but wasn’t quite as frantic as hoped and the Boxing Day data seemed to suggest that the appetite for post-Christmas clearance sales wasn’t as great as expected either.

Figures from Sensormatic’s ShopperTrak Analytics insights platform suggested that early discounting dented any Boxing Day boost as retail footfall to UK stores faltered, dropping 1.7% year on year on the day after Christmas. That was despite the day delivering a 71.1% increase in shopper counts compared to the daily average.

High streets saw the biggest decline in visitor numbers, down 5.8%, with shopping centres and retail parks also falling. And as had been the case all year, outlet centres were the big winners as their footfall rose 3.2%. Sensormatic said they won out because “shoppers sought discounts on top of discounts”.

The picture of negative Boxing Day footfall was also seen in the data from MRI Software with its retail footfall figures for Boxing Day down 4.9% across all UK retail destinations year on year. This contrasts with 2023 when its figures showed footfall on Boxing Day was 4% higher than the year before with much of this led by high street activity (+8.6%).

MRI believes the decline in Boxing Day activity “may reflect a shift in consumer behaviour, influenced by the ongoing cost-of-living crisis”.

Again, it said pre-Christmas discounting may also have had an impact. It recorded footfall levels up 18.1% in all UK retail destinations on Christmas Eve this year compared to Christmas Eve last year, “suggesting that many shoppers concentrated much of their spending in a pre-Christmas rush” that was encouraged by price cuts. 

And with many retailers kicking off their Boxing Day sales online on Christmas Day, shoppers had the opportunity to grab early bargains from the comfort of their own homes. 

But consumers are clearly still spending and some locations are benefitting even as others struggle. Katie Wyle, Head of Shopping Centre Management UK at Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield told FashionNetwork.com that Boxing Day was a good one for the malls: “This year Boxing Day attracted over 320,000 shoppers to Westfield London and Stratford City which is on par with 2024 and takes our total number of visitors since festivities began to over 10 million. We’re seeing lots of people coming with friends and family to dine out and enjoy leisure activities like karting at Gravity, ice skating and bowling, as well as bagging some bargains in the sales.”

The wider Friday bounce-back across the UK also underlined the fact that consumers are still prepared to splash the cash, and total spend between Christmas Day and New Year is predicted to top £13.8 billion, according to Sensormatic, as bargain-hungry shoppers continue to snap up deals. Yet the big question is: will this be enough to rescue the festive season for many under pressure retailers?

“After a sluggish start in December delivered a 3.6% year-on-year festive footfall deficit, retailers have been playing catch-up ever since as they’ve chased critical Christmas trade,” Andy Sumpter, Sensormatic Solutions’ EMEA Retail Consultant, said.  “And this tail-chasing prompted many to launch Boxing Day sales much earlier than usual in a bid to drive pre-Christmas revenues, with some retailers even offering discounts that would traditionally have been held for Boxing Day as early in mid-December.”

That could mean margins being dented when it comes to results time.

Looking at the bigger picture too, it’s also interesting to view MRI’s comparable data from 2019. Boxing Day traffic was down almost 21% this time compared to the last season before the pandemic and Friday’s traffic was down over 15%. Again, this raises a big question: is such a strong decline a consequence of the shift to online shopping or is it more about cautious consumers and the cost-of-living crisis?

We’ll find out some of the answers as festive season trading updates are delivered in January, but a full picture will only emerge as the weeks wear on and retailers report on their profitability for the season. Meanwhile others, inevitably, are like to face an existential crisis.