Christmas is fast approaching

As of today (25th September) Christmas is only a mere 3 months away!

Lucky for us, we at OMD UK Insight love Christmas and to remind us of the approaching Christmas festivities Time Inc. kindly organised for Santa to pop into OMD UK to spread some early Christmas cheer.  Located in his magical Winnebago come grotto, numerous OMD’ers were piled with chocolate, Baileys and prizes to get us into that Christmas spirit.

So with Christmas creeping up on us, OMD UK Insight was interested in finding out how prepared the UK was for the holidays.

On the 18th September, we used usurv’s agile research platform to instantly survey a representative sample of 100 UK adults on the progress of their Christmas shopping.

According to the results, 43% of us have already bought a Christmas present this year, with females predictably leading the way versus their male counterparts (54% vs. 23%).

We also found that 63% of those who have already bought a Christmas present have done so for a child; and at this stage buying a present for a partner falls behind friends – maybe we are all waiting to get the right present or in my wife’s case waiting until stores extend their returns policy as I’m fussy to buy for.

Estimates by Criteo even suggest that as of May, £2bn had already been spent on Christmas presents; proving again that the lure of Christmas shopping is one that starts in earnest.

But regardless of when most of us start thinking about Christmas and buying presents, the reality is that this Christmas is likely to see more of us acting more conservative with our spending if current UK confidence continues to slide in Q4.

Our results show the all-year-round power of Christmas and highlights the importance of early festive planning.  But waiting until the last minute to promote deals might not be the best strategy this year as the political and economic uncertainty continue to have an impact on our consumer confidence.

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