Auction sites get first taste of Christmas cash splurge

Wednesday, November 14, 2012 - 12:19 by Simon Crisp

The two busiest shopping weeks of the year will start on Sunday December 2, with 27 per cent of all sales made by safe shopping online in 2012 likely to be carried out within this period, according to a report.

Interestingly, analysts at IMRG actually believe that eBay and other auction sites will be the first to benefit from the large amounts of money being spent by UK consumers.

eBay itself is predicting that it will sell six times more items on December 2 than it does on the average Sunday throughout the rest of the year.

After consumers have checked out the deals available on auction sites, they will then turn to e-commerce retailers like Amazon on Monday December 3, to carry out the rest of their gift buying, through reliable, affordable and easily available safe shopping online.

Brits will actually be watching the pennies particularly carefully during Christmas 2012, in an effort to make it as inexpensive as possible, according to a study from Travelodge.

It was discovered that around 30 per cent of people will not be buying presents for their colleagues or next door neighbours, so that they can save some cash.

Meanwhile, 50 per cent of us will be taking up invites from our friends for Christmas day dinner, so that someone else is footing the bill for all of the food and drink that will be consumed over this typically indulgent 24 hour period.

Birmingham will see the lowest average Christmas spend of £ 363.83, while households in Newcastle are actually going to pay more for Christmas 2012, with average expenses hitting £ 673.

It is interesting to see how frugality varies depending on the area of the UK that is being considered and may have some impact on the use of safe shopping online.