Yahoo Finance Warning: Avoid doing your Christmas shopping on these days
If you still haven’t done your Christmas shopping, you’ll want to avoid heading to the shops on these days.
Australians like to procrastinate when it comes to Christmas shopping, with the busiest periods always landing on the weekend just before the special day, and the proceeding Thursday and Saturday.
Long standing consumer spending data from Commonwealth Bank shows that on the whole, Sundays are the best day of the week to do your Christmas shopping as the crowds are generally smaller.
Covid hasn’t dampened our Christmas spirit
While some experts were expecting Australians to cut back on spending this year in the aftermath of the coronavirus, it seems the pandemic hasn’t dampened our christmas spirit.
This year retailers are optimistic, expecting more than five per cent growth year-on-year, according to Deloitte’s annual Retailers’ Christmas Survey 2020 .
The percentage of retailers expecting more than five percent growth this year (39 per cent) has nearly doubled since last year, illustrating that whilst retail spending will likely be lower in 2020, many retailers are seeing supercharged demand for their products as consumers spend more time at home with the share of wallet for retailers shifting accordingly, the report says.
The data also shows 71 per cent expect online sales during Christmas to exceed the same period last year while a whopping 44 per cent of respondents expect over a 10 per cent increase in total sales for the festive period - the highest in the history of the survey.
A blow for physical stores
While retailers are confident that Christmas spending will mostly continue to rise in 2020, research conducted by reviews.org suggests that the shift to online sales could put some physical stores in trouble.
The pandemic has changed how consumers purchase their goods, with the data suggesting one in four people who shopped in-store last year are planning to buy online this year instead.
The study found 48 per cent of respondents said they would shop mostly online for Christmas this year while 52 per cent said they will shop mostly in-store.
It was also suggested that 55 per cent of Australians shop online in general more than they did last year while 43 per cent were planning to spend less money on gifts this festive season.
Australian Retail Association CEO Paul Zahra told news.com.au that the findings are unsurprising given the difficult year Australia’s retail industry suffered amid the coronavirus lockdowns when physical businesses were forced to close and customers were pushed to online shopping instead.
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