With only the beginnings of a crisp chill in the air, the high streets are already gearing up for the annual Christmas shopping frenzy. Each passing year, retailers attempt to entice shoppers earlier and earlier, adopting trends like Black Friday and Cyber Monday from across the pond to ensure early impactful sales in the run […]
With only the beginnings of a crisp chill in the air, the high streets are already gearing up for the annual Christmas shopping frenzy. Each passing year, retailers attempt to entice shoppers earlier and earlier, adopting trends like Black Friday and Cyber Monday from across the pond to ensure early impactful sales in the run up to the holidays. Insights from the latest Kantar Media TGI Clickstream study reveal who early bird Christmas shoppers are and how best to target them.
Nearly a third of all Christmas shopping takes place in September/October
According to TGI Clickstream, 31% of British adults start planning their Christmas shopping between September and October. This may reflect the fact that the latest autumn/winter technology and clothing ranges are released during this period and people are looking to buy something new for the season.
The study further shows that these Christmas eager beavers buy Christmas gifts for an average of 10 people per year and their average total expenditure for Christmas present shopping is nearly £400.
Appeal to their penchant for image and quality
To get a leg up on competitors, marketers should appeal to the early Christmas shoppers’ magpie-like affinity to quality and image.
This group is 24% more likely than the average British adult not to leave home without their make-up. They are also 13% more likely to consider having cosmetic surgery.
Quality is also incredibly important to this group; 64% enjoy owning good quality things.
Early Christmas shoppers already enjoy shopping
One reason this group may shop for Christmas so early is that they are already very fond of shopping.
45% of them really enjoy shopping for clothes and 32% say they really enjoy any kind of shopping.
Marketers would be wise to appeal to these shopaholics while already in stores. 60% of this group say that they treat themselves to things they don’t need and 63% say they are more likely to buy a product if they can feel and touch it first.
Embracing online purchasing
For early Christmas purchasers, 41% say that convenience often plays a part in their purchase decisions. Naturally, therefore, this group also wholly embraces online shopping when it is more convenient than shopping in store. Top e-commerce sites visited by this group include Amazon, eBay and Argos with 63%, 44% and 22% respectively shopping through these sites. Looking further into the analytics from our metered data, this group spends an average of 9.96 minutes per visit in the past four weeks on Ebay.co.uk, 9.36 minutes on Amazon.co.uk, 7.85 minutes on Argos.co.uk.
For e-commerce advertisers looking to better target this group during the Christmas shopping months, Kantar Media’s Ad-Vantage solution enables the creation of bespoke target profiles of these shoppers on TGI before generating the exact cookies to reach them online.
By Stephanie Keller
Marketing Executive and Media Analyst
Kantar Media TGI
