Christmas, along with many other things, will look a little different this year. Families are considering resized turkeys for smaller gatherings, the result of coronavirus restrictions. And bricks-and-mortar retailers are wondering whether they’ll get a reprieve from lockdown, granting a small window of opportunity for Christmas shopping.
Impulse buying accounts for 16 per cent of overall retail sales, by one estimate, which means every day shops aren’t open in the run-up to Christmas is a lost opportunity. Families have their shopping lists, but once the main Christmas presents are bought, it’s often offhand purchases that make up most of consumers’ spending.
“I might have some vague ideas of the kind of shop I want to go to, but being in that environment and spotting something is useful,” says Graham Soult, a retail analyst. “I think that’s one of the joys of shopping in a bricks-and-mortar environment compared to online. The nature of online is you can’t find something random unless you search for it. It’s much harder to stumble across those things in an online world.”
Yet with high street shops shut, and the number of shopping days until Christmas rapidly ticking down towards zero, the retail sector is in a quandary. How can retailers encourage impulsive purchases when the shops themselves are closed and those that remain open are operating on the basis of getting people through as quickly and safely as possible?