100 days to Christmas: research reveals the shopping strategies to crack Christmas

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Published on Tuesday, 17 September 2013 15:00

Last Updated on 17 September 2013

Monica Costa

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Believe it or not today Tuesday 17 September 2013 marks 100 days to go until Christmas Day! It is quite fascinating to see what consumers are doing from year to year with regards to Christmas shopping. New exclusive research conducted by OnePoll for Retail Assist has recently surveyed 1000 consumers from across the UK to reveal the shopping strategies that consumers plan to use to crack Christmas this year. See the main results here.

With 34% of people having already bought their first Christmas present, shoppers are already getting ahead of the seasonal spending spree, using a mixture of in-store, mobile and online shopping to grab their gifts of choice.

Whilst the majority of people (57%) expect to shop using a mixture of online and offline shopping, 25% of consumers are expected to do all of their shopping online and only 15% of shoppers predicting they will buy all their Christmas gifts in-store.

Typically the drive to buy online has been to save time and money, but the research revealed that shoppers on average will still spend 35 minutes browsing online per gift, with the main reason for avoiding the shops cited by 57% of people as being to avoid the crowd’s in-store and not bag a bargain.

Whilst tablet computers seemed to be the gift of choice in 2012, most shoppers (42%) planned to use their laptop to click through their shopping list, suggesting an element of multi-tasking Christmas jobs alongside home, work and family commitments. This theory is reinforced with the insight that 42% of shoppers admit that they plan to sneakily buy a gift for a family member while they sit on the sofa watching TV and 6% of purchases will be made using a work computer. 15% of shoppers will use tablet devices and 5% will use mobile phones which also indicates that gifts may be grabbed on-the-go.

Tapping into technology is also set to take another step forward this Christmas as retailer’s Click & Collect services mature with 37% of consumers expecting to use this option to beat the high street battle.