Boxing Day has become just another average shopping day

The Downtown Best Buy opened its doors at 8 a.m. on Boxing Day. There were door-crasher specials just beyond the entry gates. Flat-screen TVs for less than $200 each. Magic bullets for less than $25.

But there weren’t any customers at 8 a.m.

“Everyone was sleeping in,” said a staffer.

The days of people lining up Boxing Day morning are gone. The new reality is that Boxing Day is, at best, about as busy as a normal shopping day during the holiday season.

At Kingsway Mall, it was easy to find a parking spot close to the food-court entry doors. Of all the shops in the mall, only Sephora was busy.

At a store that specializes in Japanese anime and games, the shopkeepers said that it was too early on Boxing Day to get too worried about lack of customers. After all, the kids who want to spend their Christmas money don’t get up first thing Boxing Day morning. They’ll wait till later in the week.

At a kitchen-gadget place, the story is that there aren’t a lot of items left to discount for Boxing Day. Stores are being more careful about inventory, and this shop is sold out of a lot of the items that would have been placed on display for Boxing Day sales.

David Soberman, a marketing professor at the University of Toronto, said one of the main reasons the beloved holiday has changed from door-buster sales to a more mellowed shopping day is because people are buying online. The holiday, which was mainly to get rid of leftover inventory, no longer has the same drive as it once did.

“Even places like The Bay don’t exist anymore,” Soberman said. “But because many people are ordering the types of products, which I mean are clothing and durables, online, the same issues of having inventory leftover doesn’t come into play now.”

Items like Christmas decorations, which people only buy during the holidays, would still go on sale but it is only a small portion of what used to drive Boxing Day.

Soberman said people’s purchases are more spread out and they are doing their shopping ahead of time. With the ability to check prices more easily, the demand that used to characterize Boxing Day has diminished.

While the holiday might never be what it once was three decades ago, Soberman believes it will always exist since there are still many physical stores stocked with inventory.

“Brick-and-mortar retailers need to think of creative ways to get people to continue coming into their stores. My view is that retailers should probably do their best to try to take advantage of this,” Soberman said.

“(These) retailers are under pressure from online retailers. So you put those two things together, it all speaks to the importance of trying to build on events that typically are done in traditional retailers.”

— With files from Steven Sandor

ctran@postmedia.com

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