This year’s Christmas is set to be a bumper celebration as Brits reveal their spending plans. This month’s Greene King Leisure Spend Tracker has revealed that over a quarter of British adults (27%), who expect to celebrate the festive season, intend to spend more this Christmas than last year, while almost 60% have indicated that they have no plans to cut spending this year.
Not only are Brits side-lining attempts to reign in the Christmas budget, the nation is also planning to start Christmas shopping early. Around 60% of British adults making merry this Christmas have either already begun buying their presents or plan to have their shopping underway by the beginning of December. Just 9% intend to leave buying their gifts until the fortnight before Christmas Day. Stereotypically, men are twice as likely to be last minute shoppers than women.
Consumer confidence
Fiona Gunn, Greene King’s marketing director, said: “Further growth on last year’s spending would mean a great boost for the UK economy. Beyond showing how much Brits enjoy the festive period, these findings indicate that consumers are much more confident in their personal finances than in recent years. Interest rates are expected to stay low, supermarket price wars are driving household costs down and online orders are making the Christmas shopping much easier.”
Key Highlights
- Overall, average British household leisure spend increased by 1% year-on-year, while it increased 8% month-on-month
- Month-on-month, family households increased their total leisure spending by 12%, as school holidays encouraged higher spending on family entertainment
- Year-on-year, Eating Out saw the most significant increase as the casual dining sector continued to grow. This trend was particularly notable in London and the South East
- Households without kids increased spending on Other Leisure by 11%. Much of this increase was a result of increased spend on live sports events, particularly given the early start of the Premiership this year
Commenting on this month’s Leisure Spend Tracker, Fiona added: “The continued increase in wages and rise in consumer confidence could be a driver of the recent uptick in spending on Other Leisure. Over the school holidays, parents have been entertaining their children with trips to the theatre, the cinema, museums and other attractions. Spending on live sports events has also seen an increase due to the earlier start to the Premiership football season and, as the Rugby World Cup has just kicked off, we look forward to seeing this trend continue throughout the autumn.”
Greene King Leisure Spend Tracker
- The Greene King Leisure Spend Tracker is part of an omnibus questionnaire run on behalf of Greene King by research partner YouGov and analysed in conjunction with Trajectory Partnership.
- The Greene King Leisure Spend Tracker is the first of its kind in Britain and aims to provide greater insights into consumer discretionary spending.
- Focuses on spending patterns across leisure sectors such as eating out, drinking out, gambling, cinema-going, health & fitness and live events.
- Each month’s report is based on an online, nationally representative sample of c. 4,000 individuals (GB, 18+), reflecting the leisure behaviour of c. 4,000 households. Data has been collected every month since August 2013.