76% of UK consumers buy half their Christmas presents online

Shopping online is getting more and more important, even for occasions where it really comes in handy if you have your presents on time. In the United Kingdom, more than three quarters of consumers recently said they will buy at least half of their Christmas presents online this year.

This is the key finding from a new report from Yodel. It also shows that 29 percent of UK consumers have already (the survey was carried out during the second week of September) started buying their Christmas presents. On the other hand, 13 percent of men and 5 percent of women said they would leave all shopping to the last minute.

September the most popular time to start searching
Overall, 18 percent of consumers said they will start shopping their Christmas presents in October, 25 percent said they would do this in November and 23 percent said they won’t get around it until December. September was the most popular time to start searching. As said, 76 percent say they’ll but at least half of their presents online this year, while 3 percent think they will get everything at physical stores.

Earlier research from Yodel shows that on Black Friday last year, only 8 percent of shoppers place orders online. Now, 30 percent plans to take part in online promotions on 27th November this year.

Huge increase in number of parcels expected
“The advent of online shopping, speed of delivery and pre-Christmas promotions has changed the way we shop and we wanted to understand consumers’ shopping trends”, says Dick Stead, executive chairman of Yodel. “The results are important because they give a clear idea of what to expect over the coming months as we plan for big spikes in the number of parcels that we deliver to shoppers, as well as return to retailers.”