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Boxing Day had a slow start in some parts of Edmonton on Tuesday.
Kaylee Cripps and her husband started a new tradition to shop for Christmas on Boxing Day this year to save some money. They headed to Southgate Centre Tuesday expecting it to be busy.
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“We don’t buy ourselves a lot throughout the year. So this is like a good shopping day. We just do like small stockings on Christmas,” Cripps told Postmedia in an interview.
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“It feels like a normal weekend. I was kind of expecting it to be a little chaotic,” Cripps said.
Cripps’ husband worked in retail for the last 20 years and this is the first time he got Boxing Day off, so he wanted to enjoy the sales this year as a customer.
Meanwhile, Kwasi Larbi came to the mall with his wife and son not only to kill some time and get out of the house but also to find some good deals on items like clothes and perfume and send them back home to Ghana.
“I’ve also been in the house throughout the weekend. I felt bored and then I felt like coming around. My wife wants to shop a bit,” said Larbi.
Best Buy located on 109 Street and 103 Avenue looked slightly busy Tuesday morning.
“Our customers are very excited about a lot of our deeply discounted products. We are definitely busier than usual,” said Heather Haseloh, store leader at Best Buy.
Talha Qureshi, customer service team lead at Best Buy, said they are bracing for a very busy day where one customer service agent would be helping five customers at the same time.
“It’s gonna get busier for sure towards the end. We’re having fun. Everyone’s ready,” Qureshi said.
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Retail analyst Bruce Winder said Boxing Day has been diluted not only in Edmonton but also across the country for two main reasons — inflation and Boxing Week.
“Retailers have changed Boxing Day to Boxing Week and it now starts before Dec. 25 — been like that for some time,” Winder said. “More people are spending for Boxing Day/Week online for convenience.”
Consumers this year are also being more cautious as high inflation continues to make rent, food and mortgage payments more expensive, Winder said.
“As well as fear of job loss has many cutting back,” he said.
Following Canada’s rebound from the pandemic, higher interest rates and inflation have started to lower consumer purchasing power, slowing down economic growth, Robin Wiebe, lead economist, economic forecasting at The Conference Board of Canada, told Postmedia in an interview.
Wiebe believes prices in the country are still going to go up in 2024, but not as fast as they have in the last two years.
“For next year, we’re looking at much more subdued inflation closer to 2.6 per cent,” Wiebe said.
“I think interest rates are widely expected to fall.”
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