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Prisjakt: This year’s Black Friday offers in Norway were worse than usual

This year's Black Friday offers in Norway were worse than last year, Prisjakt's overview shows.

Published: 26 November 2022 15:03 CET
Black Friday sale
The average discount on the best offers in online stores this year was lower than in 2021. Photo by Artem Beliaikin / Unsplash

“The average discount on the best offers in online stores was lower than last year, and the proportion of offers that appeared to be better than they really were increased sharply,” Prisjakt’s manager for Norway, Christoffer Reina, stated, according to news bureau NTB.

Prisjakt is a price and product comparison service.

They had expected better offers due to full inventories and weakened purchasing power among Norwegian consumers.

The proportion of offers that increased in price up to 30 days before Black Friday, and were then reduced on Black Friday, was also significantly higher than last year – 12 percent compared to 7 percent in 2021.

Bad deals

Reina said he was surprised by the numbers. Over half of the products that the comparison service monitors had a higher price on Black Friday than they had earlier this year.

Despite this fact, it seems that Norwegians shopped a lot. The payment service Klarna recorded a sales increase of 18 percent compared to last year. Between a third and a half of all online shopping in the Nordics is processed through Klarna’s service.

“Already in the first hour after midnight on Black Friday, we had more people shopping online than last year. It picked up throughout the day and increased sharply in the last hour before midnight yesterday,” marketing director in Klarna Norway, Thomas Elvestad, said.

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ECONOMY

High interest rates unlikely to strengthen weak Norwegian krone 

Higher interest rates are unlikely to help boost a weak krone, finance experts have said after Norway’s central bank raised the key policy rate. 

Published: 24 March 2023 16:20 CET
High interest rates unlikely to strengthen weak Norwegian krone 

Lower interest rates have been pointed to as a factor, contributing to the Norwegian krone is at its weakest level against the euro, dollar and pound for several years. 

Essentially, interest rates in Norway are lower than in other countries, which makes the krone less attractive to investors. 

READ ALSO: What is making the Norwegian krone so weak?

On Thursday, Norges Bank raised the key policy rate to three percent, and analysts forecast that the central bank’s interest rate will be between 3.5 and 3.75 percent by the autumn. 

While low-interest rates have contributed to a week krone, the higher interest rates are unlikely to do much to help strengthen Norway’s ailing currency, financial experts have said. 

“I do not believe that Norges Bank, through the interest rate differential, will be able to secure a stronger krone exchange rate over time,” Kjetil Martinsen, the chief economist for Swedbank, told business news publication Finansavisen. 

Harald Magnus Andreassen, the chief economist at SpareBank 1 Markets, told the same publication that the bank would need to raise its rates much higher to tip interest rates in favour of the krone. 

“If Norges Bank were to save inflation by strengthening the krone exchange rate, they would have to raise interest rates by 150-200 basis points more than they have in the interest rate range now. We are therefore talking about a policy interest rate of over five percent, and it is not certain that it would even help,” he explained. 

He added that the world going green made it harder for the currencies of countries whose economies revolve around the sale of commodities. For example, Norway itself is heavily dependent on oil and gas sales. Historically, as oil prices have risen and fallen, so has the krone.

READ MORE: How long will the Norwegian krone remain weak?

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