Amazon is stealing a march on traditional stores by offering a week of discounts in the run-up to one of the biggest shopping days of the year.
High Street retailers are expected to bank £200million on Black Friday, which falls this week.
Black Friday is an American tradition that sees retailers offer huge discounts on the day after Thanksgiving to kick off the Christmas sales season. In recent years it has been embraced here too.
Like-for-like retail sales were then flat in October and shops are thought to have built up piles of untouched stock.
Festive shoppers are expected to spend up to £74billion in the six weeks before Christmas Day as people stock up on food, drink, decorations and, of course, presents.
Almost one in four purchases are expected to be made online as shoppers splurge £1.7bn a day in the run-up to Christmas.
Experts say internet sales will account for £17.3bn of all festive spending, an increase of £1.6bn since last year.
On Friday, high street shops and malls will open early as they battle with online retailers slashing prices, with Visa Europe predicting that £360,000 will be spent every minute, or £6,000 a second, on its cards.
John Lewis has promised that its Never Knowingly Undersold commitment will remain in place on Friday where possible, with stores opening their doors to hordes of shoppers at 8am.
John Lewis director of online Mark Lewis said: 'Black Friday has definitely become one of the key dates in the UK's shopping calendar.
'Black Friday is changing the way our customers plan their Christmas shopping and we expect this year will see it come of age in the retail calendar.'
Among more than 3,000 Amazon deals, shoppers will find Canon digital SLR cameras down from £1,699.99 to £690, pre-owned Apple iPhone 5s down from £429 to £379, and £80 off some vacuum cleaners.
Even more discounts will be revealed tomorrow as Amazon's Black Friday Week gets into full swing.
Amazon's vice president of EU retail, Xavier Garambois, said: 'Last year, Black Friday was so popular that for the very first time in our history we received orders for over four million items in one day.
'This year, we are offering ten times as many deals as Black Friday Deals Week 2010. From children's toys and consoles to fine jewellery and wearable technology, Black Friday Deals Week now signals the start of Christmas shopping in the UK with millions of pounds to be saved.'
Asda - whose parent company Walmart is renowned for its Black Friday reductions in the US - will offer deals such as quad bikes for £3,500, a discount of almost 50 per cent.
Tesco - whose sale will start at midnight - claims its sales are projected to surpass those on Boxing Day for the first time.
The supermarket giant is offering discounts of up to 70 per cent on more than 200 electrical, entertainment, mobile and DIY products alongside children's toys.
Currys PC World said it expected Black Friday traffic to its website to exceed that of Christmas Day with more than one million visits.
Jeremy Fennell, e-commerce director of the technology retailer, said: 'Black Friday is one of the biggest trading days of the year now, with more and more retailers getting involved.
'We predict traffic to our websites this year to be even bigger than the volume seen on Christmas Day last year, with over half coming from mobile as more and more people take the opportunity to get great deals on the go. It's going to be a huge day.'
Superdrug said it expected to sell a Black Friday product every second, including 16,000 electric toothbrushes, 20,000 bottles of fragrance and half-price One Direction light-up mirrors.
VoucherCodes.co.uk said it would have a team of 50 people tracking and uploading codes, deals and flash sales from across the web on to a dedicated page for consumers navigating the sales.
Experts behind a retail report which will be published next week believe the upward trend is linked to the rise of smartphones and tablets, which make it easier to shop online.
But stores and shopping centres will see their share of festive spending fall to 76.6 per cent, the equivalent to £56.8bn, the report will warn. That accounts for a 4.2 per cent drop in sales, compared to last year.
The Centre for Retail Research, which compiled the report by talking to retail chains and shoppers, said websites are attracting customers mainly due to low prices and convenience.
Experts also say households are expected to spend a record average of £775 on Christmas this year, up £17 from 2013.
That includes an average spend of £459 on gifts, while £216 is expected to be spent on food and drink. Each household will spend £77 on travel and £23 on decorations.
Meanwhile, the British Retail Consortium said shoppers had 'held back' on autumn spending in order to splash out over Christmas.
The BRC said non-food retail sales for the past three months had grown by 2.8 per cent, compared to 3.5 per cent last year.
A spokesman said: 'Sales data suggests many people have held back on spending ahead of Christmas, economising to leave room for a little luxury during the Christmas period.'
The warm autumn left piles of unsold coats and jumpers, with Next revealing it had reduced its annual profit projections by £25million.
John Lewis' fashion sales fell 13 per cent year-on-year earlier in autumn.
Professor Joshua Bamfield, director of the Centre for Retail Research, said: 'Christmas period year-on-year sales growth is good - and much better than a year ago.
'Consumer confidence has grown steadily since 2013. But recent months' growth have been below peak mid-year growth partly due to the long summer keeping shoppers away from stores.'
He added: 'Online's proportion of sales will increase. Websites often provide a greater variety of goods than a high street store, with cheaper prices and more convenience for customers.
'This is particularly true for casual customers buying electronic goods and tablets for Christmas.'
(Daily Mirror)
