Mad dash: 10.1m shoppers to hit the high street and splurge £1.38bn on gifts

With just one week to go until Christmas, new research by VoucherCodes.co.uk and the Centre of Retail Research (CRR) reveals 14.9m shoppers are expected to spend a huge £1.65bn buying last-minute festive purchases on ‘Super Saturday’ – the last Saturday before Christmas – equating to a huge £2.38m spent per minute.

Falling on 22^nd December, Super Saturday looks set to be one of the busiest and most successful high street shopping days before Christmas, with 10.1m shoppers hitting stores to spend a total of £1.38bn. Online sales will peak the day before on ‘Frenzied Friday’, with £321m being rung through online tills, as 7.2m shoppers seek out last-minute gifts while avoiding the high street crowds.

Frenzied Friday & Super Saturday: In-store vs. online spend

Super Saturday spend

A separate study by VoucherCodes.co.uk and Opinium revealed that food and drink (27%), fashion (17%), alcohol (16%) and toys (13%) top the Super Saturday shopping list and that last-minute shoppers like to keep it local. Half plan to visit a local shopping centre (50%), while a quarter (25%) will pop down to a local supermarket to pick up those final bits. A further 28% will buy online taking advantage of express delivery or click-and-collect facilities.

Brits’ Super Saturday shopping list:

1. Food – 27%
2. Clothing, footwear, accessories – 17%
3. Alcohol – 16%
4. Toys – 13%
5. Cosmetics and perfume – 11%
6. Homeware – 10%
7. Personal electronics – 10%
8. DVDs, computer games, books – 9%
9. Home electronics – 8%
10. White goods – 5%

Last minute gifting

A fifth (20%) of Brits confess to being last-minute shoppers, of whom almost a third (32%) say it’s because they don’t enjoy Christmas shopping and 23% struggle to find the time. That said, 21% deliberately hold out for bigger discounts, and 18% enjoy the excitement of the eleventh-hour dash. On the contrary, more than one in five (22%) claim they snap up gifts at the last minute because they worry they haven’t bought enough. Overall, men are more likely to leave their festive shopping to the final moments than women (25% vs. 15% respectively), while last-minute shoppers are most likely to come from London (31%), Scotland (29%) and Northern Ireland (27%).

Mums (21%) top the list of those we put off buying gifts for, followed by siblings (20%) and, perhaps most surprisingly, children (20%). Chocolates (26%) and perfumes (25%) top the nation’s last-minute gift list, followed by clothes (25%), gift cards (21%) and alcohol (21%).

Top last-minute shopping list:

1. Chocolates – 26%
2. Perfume – 25%
3. Clothes – 25%
4. Gift cards and vouchers – 21%
5. Alcohol – 21%
6. Bath and shower/beauty products – 19%
7. Toys – 15%
8. Electronics – 14%
9. Candles – 14%
10. Flowers – 13%