Mobiles transform morning commutes and lunch breaks to prime Christmas shopping time
UK shoppers are planning to use their morning commute and office lunch breaks to shop for Christmas this year with four in 10 using mobile phones to search for festive purchases.
People will spend an average of 10 hours browsing online this year, according to research from Webloyalty, indicating that more time is spent searching for items due to a broader range of choice.
The e-commerce company, which surveyed over 2,000 consumers between September and October 2015, expects a total Christmas spend of £16.5bn with the average consumer spending £442. However, despite retailers already releasing holiday advertising campaigns more than a third of the population will not start their Christmas shop until December.
Guy Chiswick, managing director of Webloyalty Northern Europe, commented: “The Christmas shopping period is incredibly important to the UK economy. Looking through the research it is positive to see that Christmas spending is continuing to grow year on year. This increase in spending could make this Christmas the best for retailers since the recession.”
Food purchases remain a large part of holiday shopping; the research suggests that each person will spend over £150 on food and drink next month.
Tesco is the public’s favourite for groceries in spite of lost market share with more than a third of Brits set to serve a Tesco-bought Christmas dinner. However they are still in close competition with discount stores as Aldi and Lidl which will attract 43 per cent of shoppers.