October – Christmas shopping projections
At the end of October we conducted research amongst a representative sample of shoppers to gauge their feelings about this coming Christmas. Our top line findings suggest that total Christmas spending this year will be down by 15% vs. comparable research conducted by Business Blueprints last year. As many as a third of all shoppers also believe that they will be spending less this Christmas than last year, with a little more than half believing that their total non-food spend will be unchanged. Interestingly the number of non-food Christmas shopping trips that will be made this year appears unchanged on previous years.
Not surprisingly internet shopping shows further increases whilst shoppers were able to give us strong clues about which categories will be the winners and losers on line this year.