In today’s market, consumers are very conscious of price – they want value and the JB Hi-Group is benefitting from that during the current economic environment, according to CEO, Terry Smart.

“It feels like we’ve returned to pre-Covid levels of promotional activity. Suppliers are promoting as they were and we’re doing our on-floor discounting as usual. When times are tough, that’s what you do – you go out and promote. Our team works with suppliers on creating promotions that drive sales and drive a result,” he said.

Q4 is a prime example with Mother’s Day in May and End of Financial Year (EOFY) sales in June.

“We can see customers are lining up behind those promotional periods. We are just making sure we execute those promotions well. When we do JB Perks deals, it’s more about customer acquisition and building our membership base,” JB Hi-Fi Group chief financial officer, Nick Wells said.

Smart added: “Tax time was similar to last year in the sense of the length of the promotions. Nowadays these promotions seem to last the entire month of June. As for Black Friday, we saw this creep out for a few extra days last year – instead of one week it extended to almost two weeks. This year we anticipate the timing to remain the same. It’s getting closer into December, and it will be interesting to see the flow-on effect for Christmas and Boxing Day but we anticipate Black Friday to be even bigger again than 2023.

“Consumers absolutely understand the Black Friday sales event and people are looking for value so we expect another good period for the group.”

Smart said JB Hi-Fi and The Good Guys also benefit from other sales events such as Amazon Prime Day.

“You can argue it’s tougher on margins but at the end of the day, all we care about is taking the sale. Our teams got behind it, took advantage of the hype and matched prices. We were actively promoting and pushing deals and we saw great results,” he said.

“Consumers have come to expect and trust that both JB Hi-Fi and The Good Guys are offering the best price. They anticipate that if there’s a sale in the market from any brand that we’re going to match those deals or bring our own promotions at the same time.”