The picture surrounding this year’s all important Christmas spend is slowly becoming clearer, with US residents showing an increased willingness to spend online, UK retailers enjoying bumper high-street figures and New Zealanders preferring to shop before the sales. Author: Chris Taylor
The picture surrounding this year’s all important Christmas spend is slowly becoming clearer, with US residents showing an increased willingness to spend online, UK retailers enjoying bumper high-street figures and New Zealanders preferring to shop before the sales.
Customers in the US decided that this year, online payment was one of the best ways of spending their cash. Data from IBM, cited by TechCrunch, shows that online sales for Christmas Day grew by 16.4 per cent from last year.
Furthermore, these shoppers showed a new interest in making their purchases from mobile devices. IBM says that 18.3 per cent of all online purchases were made from a mobile device, up from 8.4 per cent in 2010.
In the UK meanwhile, a whopping £4.3 billion was spent over December 26th and December 27th, according to the Mail Online. The total makes 2011 a record-breaking year, as payment processors handled £77,000 worth of transactions per second.
New Zealanders similarly went mad during the Christmas shopping spree, with Boxing Day sales higher than last year’s. According to NZHerald.co.za, $105.8 million (£52.4m) was spent in electronic transactions on Boxing Day – 6.9 per cent more than 2010.
However, the pull of the post-Christmas sale couldn’t beat that of December 23rd. It became the nation’s biggest shopping day of the year when over $230 million (£113.8m) was put through the tills.
It was a completely different situation in Greece and Italy, as shoppers began to feel the pinch of their respective nation’s sovereign debt.
Retail sales in Greece dropped by 30 per cent, while in Italy, consumers spent 48 Euros less per person than the average of the past five years.
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