38% British consumers looking forward to Christmas, 6.5% not: Survey

Despite rising costs, only 6.5 per cent of people say they are not looking forward to Christmas this year.

Clothing and footwear sales are forecast to see the biggest increase, rising from £1.81 billion to £1.9 billion, or by 4.6 per cent.

Last year, UK retail sales fell by 3 per cent year on year (YoY) to £82.2 billion as record high interest rates hit consumers' budgets and forced many to cut back on Christmas spending.

While interest rates are still high, and have been for many months, UK retail sales are forecast to total £84.9 billion over the six week Christmas period this year—a rise of 3.3 per cent YoY.

However, the rate of inflation is 6.7 per cent now, and this suggests that households are actually reducing their spending where possible to minimise the impact of these rising costs.

While total retail sales are set to rise this year, the volume of products purchased is expected to decline by 4.1 per cent. This suggests that the rise in total sales is primarily due to high inflation rates and not consumers making more purchases.

Spending for Christmas is expected to increase this year due to high inflation, rising by 0.9 per cent from £21.58 billion to £21.77 billion.

However, the rise in spend on items for Christmas is not as significant as the rise in spend over the six week Christmas period, suggesting that consumers are cutting back where possible this festive season.

Each household is expected to spend £823.4 on Christmas this year, covering everything from gifts, to Christmas dinner, travel and more. This marks a 0.9-per cent rise from last year when the average household spent £815.05 on Christmas.

Almost two-thirds of purchases over the Christmas period this year will be made in-store in comparison to 36 per cent being made online.

Although 12 per cent of British consumers say they expect to spend more online this festive season than last year, a greater number plan to spend less online, instead heading back to the high street to shop (14 per cent).

Offline sales are expected to exceed online sales, totalling £54.01 billion compared to the £30.91 billion forecast to be spent online. Both offline and online sales are predicted to see similar growth YoY with sales increasing by 3.5 per cent and 3 per cent respectively.

For the first time since the pandemic, sales made using mobile devices are set to increase over the Christmas period as online retailers become more savvy at targeting social media users. Smartphones will see the biggest increase in spend rising from £11.6 billion to £12.52 billion over the past year—up by 7.9 per cent.

However, across Europe the situation is less positive. With the exception of Spain, which is set to see sales rise by 4 per cent during Christmas, all the other European nations analysed will fail to see sales grow above 1 per cent YoY.

This is in stark contrast to last year, when the United Kingdom saw the worst growth figures out of all European countries analysed.

The Netherlands is expected to see the worst sales growth this year with a rise of just 0.3 per cent YoY, followed by Germany and Belgium both with a rise in sales of 0.6 per cent, the survey found.

In Europe as a whole, sales are expected to rise by 1.7 per cent from £302.83 billion last year to £307.92 billion.

ALCHEMPro News Desk (DS)