UK shoppers are set to fork out a collective total of £805 million on Christmas Day this weekend, a 10.1 per cent uptick compared to the same day last year.
According to research from IMRG, consumers are predicted to outspend the 2015 figure of £728 million, while Boxing Day this year will almost reach £1 billion, with a forecast if £984 million to be collectively spent online.
Last year‘s Boxing Day figures stood at £856 million.
Despite this, both those days would still not reach the £1.23 billion spent on Black Friday last month.
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“It might not seem an obvious fixture in the retail calendar, but Christmas Day has actually become a fairly significant online shopping day in the UK,” IMRG managing director Justin Opie said.
“Whereas gifts were traditionally physical items, many people now receive gift cards which they can instantly redeem on the day to download the kinds of items that have become highly virtual – games, music, in-play app upgrades.
“Many retailers will also have set their post-Christmas sales campaigns live on their sites by then, which are very easy to browse using the kinds of devices many people have access to – smartphones, tablets, etc – during a quiet digestive moment post-Christmas dinner perhaps.”
The spending forecast is based on online sales data from IMRG and supported by online site traffic volume data from SimilarWeb.
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