Street Survey 017: Christmas shopping – when do you start and how much online?
By Summit | Friday 23rd August 2013Think Christmas in Summer
Peak season has already begun for retailers, that’s the time when they begin their preparation for Christmas – their most important time of the year.
In the meantime, UK shoppers walking the summer High Streets in shorts and T-shirt are unaware of all the planning, design and preparation that goes on behind the scenes.
They start to grumble when they see tinsel and Christmas cards appear o supermarket shelves, and groan at the first Christmas music played in a shop.
And so today’s Summit Street Survey and the one subject no-one wants to address when they have summer holidays on their mind.
Summit Street Survey: Christmas Shopping and Online
In this week’s Summit Street Survey we ask shoppers when they begin their Christmas shopping and also how much of that they’ll do online.
Lots of people said ‘No thanks’, possibly believing it simply too early to even think about Christmas, let alone talk about it. Those who did stop also groaned, but agreed to speak.
Most people told us they start their shopping in November or early December.
We would have expected adults to begin shopping early and young people to start late, but the people we spoke to didn’t really follow that pattern.
Some people do plan their Christmas shopping early so it is sent and received in time, while others leave it to the last minute.
As for what proportion of shopping will be done online, some people left it so late that they were forced to use High Street shops.
Online shoppers ranged from 10 or 20% up to 50%. These were the planners.
Interestingly, one shoppers said her young sister, a believer in Santa Claus, saw all the online shopped-packages delivered to the door.
