Xmas shopping meltdown starts early this year
By Davey Winder in Editorial
Posted in e-commerce on
According to a new report from those masters of the digital metric, comScore, more than one third of online shoppers in the UK, France and Germany have already started doing their Xmas shopping. If they had surveyed one particular little Yorkshire village they would have found at least one shopper who has done the same: me. I have been doing pretty much all my seasonal shopping online for the best part of a decade now. It has nothing to do with me practising what I preach, although that was the reason that I upped sticks and moved from South London to South Yorkshire 12 years or so ago. I was writing books and magazine articles saying how wonderful the Internet was, and how it was going to change the way we work. Teleworking was still something that existed more in media column inches than reality at the time, but I was saying the Internet would change all that. And so it was I moved from city life to rural idyll, eventually training my clients, my editors, my publishers and assorted PR bunnies so that after a year or so I did not have to travel down to London once every week to meet them.
However, I digress, the reason I do my seasonal shopping online is simply because I am a man. Which means I am a lazy shopper. Women take note, men do not hate shopping, truth be told we bloody love it, what we hate is shopping when there are loads of other people around getting in the way. What we hate is having to sacrifice an entire day, which could be better spent in the pub, watching the telly or playing Halo 3, just in order to load up with pants, socks and yet another gadget we really don’t need and really won’t use. What’s more, at this time of year we hate it more than ever as those crowds get bigger and bigger.
But there’s the rub, as more and more people shop online perhaps the high street will become something of a gentleman’s haven. Somewhere we can go to shop in relative peace, happy to flirt with the attentive shop girls desperate for some human contact, and maybe even enjoy the experience.
We may even be forced into so doing, because last year my Xmas shopping experience was the worse it has ever been. The online crowds meant that much of what I wanted to buy was not in stock, and there were no guarantees that stock would arrive in time for the big day - or more to the point in time for me to wrap the buggers up and get them delivered on to my globally dispersed family and friends. Even worse than that, items that were in stock, that were guaranteed to be delivered in good time, did not materialise. Yes, I got my money back under the guarantee, but what use is that when a child is missing a present or a mother-in-law for that matter? A combination of some kind of online shopping critical mass fuelled by the uptake of broadband, coupled with a meltdown in delivery logistics (we all know who the guilty any man with his white van courier companies are) conspired against the careful online shopper.
Perhaps that is why this year people are starting their shopping earlier than ever? That comScore survey reveals that, in the UK, 48% of respondents had already started Xmas shopping in October, and another 30% will have started by now. A meagre 4% will wait until a couple of weeks before Xmas to get started, while 5% will leave it right until the last minute.
Trouble is, as I have discovered already, this means that items are running out of stock even sooner. After last year am I prepared to risk all on the promise of the online retailers that an item will be back in stock in time for my required delivery schedules? Nope, I am not. I do not intend to be out at the last minute with all those sad blokes looking for gifts again this year. So I started my seasonal shopping early, and as far as online shopping is concerned I have now finished it as well. All the other gifts I buy this year are going to be purchased direct from the retailer, so I can pay my money and bring them home with me. It feels like a retrograde step, but you know what, this lazy shopper is actually looking forward to going out there and doing it
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