Trend for online shopping on Christmas Day grows

Wednesday, December 28, 2016 - 11:09 by Graham Miller

Although most people will still be eating cold turkey and contemplating whether or not to make any New Year’s resolutions for 2017, retail industry analysts are hard at work dissecting the habits that consumers exhibited over the festive break. And new figures from Inghams indicate that December 25th is a major day for safe shopping online in the UK, according to the Telegraph.

Twenty per cent of people are expected to have made use of their smartphones or tablets in order to scour the web for the best deals on Christmas Day this year. While Boxing Day represented a bigger peak for e-commerce traffic in previous years, it seems that habits are changing as safe shopping online becomes the norm nationwide.

Some have expressed concerns about the way that this is impacting on the spirit of the Christmas celebration, arguing that smartphones are distracting people from the process of engaging with their friends and family. Others point out that having access to online services, especially social media, can be beneficial, especially for those who are feeling lonely at this time of the year.

On Christmas Day back in 2015, Amazon found that people were even buying last minute presents to prepare for the day itself, focusing mainly on gift cards which, of course, could be delivered digitally without having to present the recipient with a physical object. This type of activity was at its peak at 10am, with consumers then returning to the web to download content to the phones, laptops, games consoles and tablets they had received just after 12pm.

While online shopping is king on Christmas Day itself, this year Christmas Eve was a big win for the high street, with crowds of shoppers turning out to take advantage of the fact that it fell on a Saturday.