Translate the following paragraphs into Chinese
Big fall in Black Friday UK retail sales despite online
spending boom
Retail sales on Black Friday have fallen sharply despite a boom in online
spending as non-essential shops remain closed on England’s high streets during
the second coronavirus lockdown.
Retailers said online sales hit record levels on the pivotal discount day to
soften the blow from the closure of stores. However, UK figures from
Barclaycard, Britain’s biggest credit card provider, show payments made in
physical stores and online fell by more than a 10th comparedwith Black Friday a
year ago.
John Lewis said Friday would break all of its previous records for online
spending, with sales up by 35% compared with its busiest day during the same
period a year ago. It said 2.5m products had already been shipped since it
started offering Black Friday offers on 20 November – up 67% on last year – and
that record searches had been made for new games consoles, beauty products and
Lego kits.
However, the boom comes at a time when the company will record zero sales at all
38 of its shops in England, and at its Glasgow store, where government
restrictions have forced the closure of shops. Cardiff, Aberdeen and Edinburgh
remain open.
Barclaycard, which processes nearly £1 in every £3 spent in the UK, said most
Black Friday sales typically take place in physical shops, underscoring the
potential hit to retailers struggling during the pandemic. It warned that
overall payments made to retailers between midnight and 4pm on Friday had
plunged by 16.7% compared with the same time a year ago.
In a typical year, about two-thirds of the transactions processed by Barclaycard
on Black Friday come from in-store sales, with the rest coming from online.
The research provider Springboard, which monitors retail footfall, said visits
to shopping destinations were down by 58% across the UK by 3pm on Friday
compared with last year. Footfall was down most on high streets and at shopping
centres. The biggest fall was in central London, with a drop of 82.9%.
However, the decline in footfall was far lower in Wales and Scotland where Covid
restrictions allow more shops to open. Footfall in Wales was down by a third
across the country compared with Black Friday a year ago, while retail visits
were down by 50% in Scotland.
Separate figures from Nationwide show total spending by its debit card holders –
which unlike Barclaycard do not specify whether payments are being made to a
retailer – increased by 21% compared with the same day a week ago, as Black
Friday provided a boost during lockdown. However, it said transactions were 1%
down on Black Friday a year ago.
The figures underscore the challenge facing Britain’s retailers in the run-up to
the key Christmas shopping period, when more than a fifth of annual sales
usually take place. The British Retail Consortium estimates that shops that were
forced to close over the past month have lost a combined £8bn in sales.