The last month has been a great one for shoppers. With sales struggling, retailers have pulled out all the stops to increase traffic to the stores. I cannot remember a year with such aggressive pre-Christmas offers. For instance, Myer has hampers and Christmas trims on sale (30% and 40% respectively) the week before Christmas, and brought forward its “Boxing Day” sale to Christmas Eve. And “50% off” and “future reductions” signs are hanging on a huge number of shopfronts in the Boxing Day sales.
Unfortunately for brick and mortar stores, the march of etailers continues unabated over the holiday season. In the US, online sales from 1 November - 26 December 2011 grew 15% from the same time last year, compared to overall retail sales growth of 3.8%.
And the picture is similar in Australia. One research showed offline retail spend was down 2% for the first 15 days of December 2011 compared to the year before, but online retail spend went up by 16%. On some days, 10% of spending on credit and debit cards are with online stores.
Statistics are good and all (and I'm a numbers nerd) but what do they mean in real life? Let’s have a look at The Royal Household's Christmas gift purchases and see if they match with current trends.
I bought The Duke a diving with shark experience at Manly Oceanworld via their website after researching for online (the search was "last minute gift ideas" - I left it a bit late).
I also bought him a trilby hat from the Strand Hatter in Sydney which I found via Google. If I came up with the idea earlier I may have purchased it online*. Will The Duke look as hot as Matt Bomer in the trilby?
The Little Prince (TLP) is obsessed with fire trucks, and The Duke had wanted to get him a Duplo fire station set for a long time. However the product is not available anywhere in Australia, so he ordered one from Amazon.com. Even with the exorbitant postage cost ($US50!!!), it was only $A20 more expensive than the RRP of comparable Duplo sets available in Australia.
I also bought a personalised messenger bag from Mooo for my niece.
The Duke bought me lessons for riding a bike** along with an offer to buy me a bike afterwards. He didn't buy the lesson from an online store but he found the company by online research and he booked it via e-mail and paid for it by bank transfer, so it's an online purchase in my book.
Overall, more than half of our Christmas gift dollars were spent online.
And even with the big sales going on at the malls, the majority of my post-Christmas discretionary purchases were online too. Some may say I'm researching for The Etail Queen***. If only they were tax deductible!
Did you contribute to the growth of online Christmas shopping at the expense of visiting the stores? Did you want to avoid the crowd or were you attracted by the variety of gifts available online?
* The hat I bought The Duke was a tad too big, and I'm grateful that I can take him to the store to exchange for one in the right size. If I bought it online there'll be more hassles.
** Yes I don't know how to ride a bike :-( My parents didn't let us learn when we were young. I'm looking forward to the lesson so we can go for family bike rides (TLP has a royal seat at the back of The Duke's bike).
*** Of course you'll get to read about my purchases!