Firstly, there is no single Black Friday date anymore. Retailers have stretched the promotion roughly evenly across the whole month of November, which means customers need to spend more time following the offers to find the best opportunity.
Second, the 50-70% price drops that once typified Black Friday have disappeared, and the discounts are not very different from those in other periods of the year. A PwC survey conducted in October (published mid-November) found that 41% of respondents planned to buy on Black Friday only if the offer was good enough to justify the purchase.
Third, the penetration of Asian online markets, with very low prices, reliable delivery and easy refund procedures, has dramatically impacted the balance of local demand and supply. Szabolcs Timár, senior manager at PwC, notes, “Online and international platforms have fueled this trend, as global promotions and products have now become easily accessible for buyers, while global players start promotions sooner, in early November.”
Webstore marketing is also more efficient, and loyalty programs and customized promotions reach customers directly, making these offers easier to notice and save from the general “noise” of promotions, Timár adds.
None of this means that Black Friday has completely lost its relevance. On average, customers plan to allocate HUF 77,000 to Christmas presents, of which one-third is spent during Black Friday, according to the PwC survey. Online stores lead in preference, with 63% of customers indicating local webstores, 29% foreign webstores and only 21% traditional stores as their preferred place to shop.
If we look beyond Christmas presents, online users appear much more inclined to spend, allocating HUF 130,000 to Black Friday promotions and HUF 110,000 to traditional-store shopping. And what were the most popular targets? Mobile phones and accessories, coffee-making machines, clothing, books, beauty products and toys, according to the PwC survey.
In conclusion, local Black Friday discounts may not seem as attractive as they did previously in Hungary, but this does not mean customers spend less. Spending has become more sophisticated and more targeted, and a significant share of it now goes abroad.
After such predictions, what happened in the 2025 Black Friday period? Based on the low-profile marketing campaigns preceding the promotion, retailers expected modest sales and, looking back, there were signs of a shrinking market.
One of the largest retailers, eMAG, opened its latest store in Etele Plaza, Budapest, in September 2021, describing it as its “flagship store,” given that it had shops in several other malls in Budapest at the time. Two years later, the company opened a 100,000 sqm logistics base and warehouse in Dunaharaszti (21 km south of central Budapest by road) as part of an EUR 100 million investment.
Since then, eMAG has closed its stores one by one, with the last one, in Etele Plaza, shuttering in August this year. According to information published in the Romanian media (eMag is headquartered in Bucharest), the company is selling its warehouse in Dunaharaszti and aims to complete the transaction by April of next year.
Parent company Prosus N.V., a Dutch investment group, reported losses of USD 2 mln for the fiscal year ended March 30, due to the restructuring of eMAG Hungary in 2025. According to Forbes Hungary, eMAG Hungary reported losses of HUF 9.9 billion for the full fiscal year 2025.
Based on these data, eMAG was not expected to enter Black Friday with impressive discounts. Indeed, the company focused more on prize draws and interest-free loans to attract customers. The success rate is unknown, as the company has not yet published any revenue data or spending per customer figures, let alone comparisons with previous years.
The Romanian branch of the company was less shy, boasting record sales of RON 986 mln (about HUF 74 bln), 10% more than last year’s RON 896 mln. This means that, in one day, eMAG Romania generated revenues double those of eMAG Hungary in the full fiscal year from April 1, 2024, to March 31, 2025.
eMAG was not the only retailer operating with modest discounts in Hungary. Market surveys indicate Black Friday prices are 16-17% lower than in regular periods. True, the appetite for spending has not grown much since last year. A recent survey conducted by price comparison site Árukereső reveals that more than half (56.4%) of buyers plan to spend a similar amount on Christmas as in 2024, and only 12.5% are considering spending more, typically those aged 25-34.
Interestingly, the amount budgeted for Christmas is not proportional to salaries. Those earning HUF 250,000 or less are more inclined to spend more than last year (41.7%) than those earning HUF 1.25 million, of whom only 36.6% are willing to pay out more.
The Árukereső survey also reveals that customers are avoiding taking loans as much as possible, with a mere 2.5% considering this option. In contrast, a large majority, 52.7%, prefer to spend from their salaries and 24.7% from savings. The main driver of decision-making is product quality, cited by 41.3%, while only 25.7% cited price.
This is interesting, given that a study released in October by the market research institute GKI found that the Hungarian public’s perception of the inflation rate is significantly higher than the officially published rate of less than 5%.
This article was first published in the Budapest Business Journal print issue of December 12, 2025.
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