While the Christmas may still feel a long way away, Yodel, has revealed that nearly a third of UK consumers have already started to buy their Christmas presents.
The survey of 3,165 people, which was carried out between 7th and 9th of September, shows that festive treats have been bagged by an estimated 18.6 million Brits already. This is despite the data being collected over 110 days before Christmas when the temperature was on average 20 degrees across the country and we were technically still in astronomical summertime.
Those in the North East (42%) are likely to be the most prepared, followed by the Welsh (41%) with Londoners falling behind the pack with just 18% already having bought presents to put under the tree.
Just a fifth of men have gifts awaiting someone special, compared to 33% of women, and 13% of men admit to leaving all shopping to the last minute compared to just 5% of women.
Overall, 18% of people say they will start in October, 25% in November and 23% won’t get around to it until December, making September the most popular time to start searching.
A huge three quarters of people say they’ll buy at least half of their presents online this year. Just 3% say they’ll get everything in-store.
The figures follow other research from Yodel which showed that on Black Friday 2014, only 8% of shoppers placed orders online whereas 30% of shoppers plan to take part in online promotions on 27th November this year.
Dick Stead, executive chairman of Yodel, said: “The advent of online shopping, speed of delivery and pre-Christmas promotions has changed the way we shop and we wanted to understand consumers’ shopping trends. The results are important because they give a clear idea of what to expect over the coming months as we plan for big spikes in the number of parcels that we deliver to shoppers, as well as return to retailers”.
And for anyone that’s wondering I’m not the annoying friend who announced in October that they’ve finished their Christmas shopping. I’m in the 23% that won’t start shopping until December so there’s plenty of time to get your wish lists to me!
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i do mine in January.