The Christmas shopping season is upon us once again. People shoulder to shoulder as they shuffle through high street stores; online websites processing orders 24/7. As we barrel towards Christmas 2017 – how much will people spend and where will they spend it?
A survey carried out by bobatoo.co.uk threw up some interesting results, with almost 3000 UK shoppers talking about their Christmas spending plans.
The key findings showed a whopping 64% of Christmas shopping will be done online! If you’re an online retailer, take full advantage of this with branded mailing bags and other custom printed packaging solutions that we can supply here at The Printed Bag Shop.
UK shoppers are planning to keep control of their Christmas spending this year with just 1 in 5 expecting to go over budget. On average they will buy presents for between 5 and 10 people.
Interestingly 44% of those asked are planning to spend most of their budget on children and more than 38% plan to spend under £300 on their present shopping for Christmas 2017.
It seems it’s never too early to start Christmas shopping, with 10% of those surveyed starting to shop before July! Over half of those surveyed like to shop in October and November; so, if you are in retail there’s still time to get your branding out there with special offers or discount prices, especially as 24% don’t start their Christmas shopping until December.
It’s not surprising that most people’s Christmas shopping budget will be spent on children, 44% in this survey. 39% will spend most of their budget on presents for family members, 15% on partners and a tiny 2% will spend most of their budget on friends.
The question is – will we stick to our budgets?
45% of those surveyed have no set budget – great news for retailers! For those sensible folk that do set a budget 34% plan to stick to it, 18% admit they may go slightly over budget and 3% say they will most likely spend a lot more.
Buying Christmas presents can be costly if you don’t have a plan. Of the UK shoppers in this survey 38% plan to spend less than £300 on Christmas presents this year. 30% are planning to spend between £300 and £500 whereas 14% are going on a shopping spree of more than £700!
While our significant other may be the love of our life, only 8% will be treating them to a good chunk of the Christmas budget, spending over £200 on their presents, whereas 42% of those surveyed are planning to spend under £100 on presents for their partner or spouse. The most popular spend per child was less than £50, with 12% saying they plan to spend over £200 per child.
There is more to consider than presents in the Christmas 2017 costs.
We have food, drink, the Christmas tree, decorations and everything else to plan for. The survey shows that on average we plan to spend no more than £200 on these luxury goodies. 38% of people will spend less than £100, 39% between £100 and £200, with 3% saying they will spend more than £400 on food, drink and decoration for Christmas 2017.
So there you have it, the spending patterns for Christmas 2017.
With the majority of people shopping for Christmas right now, it makes sense that retailers both online and offline have well branded bags and packaging to help promote their business as far and wide as possible. If you need to top up your printed bag supply, or get an order of Christmas themed bags, you know who to call!
