Christmas spending to reach 16.5 billion pounds

The overall festive budget is getting bigger and expected to reach 16.5 billion pounds, up by 2.5 percent on last year’s Christmas spending, according to new research from e-commerce partner Webloyalty.

The research undertaken by Conlumino reveals that 17.6 percent of UK consumers plan to spend more on Christmas gifts this year, with the majority of gift-givers spending more than 282 pounds on presents, an increase of 3.5 percent on last year.

In total, the average consumer is expected to spend 442 pounds, of which 282 pounds will be on gifts, while 159 pounds will be spent on food and drink to ring in the festive period.

Despite Christmas advertising campaigns starting this month, Webloyalty’s research revealed that over a third of the UK’s population will not actually start their Christmas shopping until December, however, it also notes that this year 73 percent of consumers will either spend more or the same on gifts as they did last year.

UK consumers to spend 16.5 billion pounds on Christmas

Mobile shopping will also boom this festive period, with four in 10 consumers planning to use their mobiles to search for Christmas purchases, with the average person expected to spend 10.4 hours shopping for Christmas food and gifts online, up from 9 hours last year.

Guy Chiswick, managing dDirector of Webloyalty Northern Europe said: “The Christmas shopping period is incredibly important to the UK economy. Looking through the research, it is positive to see that Christmas spending is continuing to grow year on year.

“This is partly due to low inflation and heavy price competition within the grocery sector, which has eased some of the pressure on household finances in recent months and helped to boost consumer confidence. This increase in spending could make this Christmas the best for retailers since the recession.”