Despite the record sales on Cyber Monday and a predicted spike on Christmas Eve, 42% of British shoppers plan to buy some of their Christmas presents after December 25.
Trusted Shop's research, which used OnePoll to survey 2000 UK consumers, identified this trend to take advantage of the Boxing Day sales. In addition, most people, 60 per cent, will be spending the same amount of money on their Christmas shopping as they did last year, despite poor economic conditions.
The availability of online shopping, combined with Boxing Day sales, have really changed shopping patterns for consumers around the Christmas holidays. Customers like to go with safe shops or ones they have been with before, but the focus of activity on Cyber Monday and the sales shows that shoppers also like bargains. The key to success in any period of high shopping activity is presenting a safe, secure proposition for customers.
Sean McKee, head of ecommerce and customer service at Schuh, said: "We have seen both Christmas Day and Boxing Day increase in terms of their commercial importance as customers increasingly realise the convenience of choosing in their comfort of their own home. The explosion in mobile devices, and particularly the use of tablet, will further drive the importance of these two as the sofa, rather than the study, becomes the place where shopping takes place."
The stereotype of men doing their shopping last minute is re-enforced by this research, with slightly more doing at least some shopping after Christmas - they are also likely to spend more with 43 per cent of men spending more than £50 in the sales, compared to 38 per cent of women.
You can see some clear trends in age groups for shopping after Christmas. With 66 per cent of over 55s doing all of their shopping before the big day. That drops to 51 per cent for 25-34 year olds. This age group has the highest percentage of 'creatures of habit', who shop consistently from the same places. Younger shoppers are more likely to be 'impulse buyers' or 'suckers for sales'. The older age groups have higher proportions of 'safe shoppers'.
Experian figures showed that 112 million visits to retail websites were made on Cyber Monday, up 32 per cent on 2011. This constitutes the single biggest day of online shopping ever recorded. The research from Trusted Shops shows that this concentrated surge of buying isn't over yet.