Festive season shopping sees two peak periods, and tops are key fashion buys

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Mar 11, 2020

It may seem too early for some to be thinking about the Christmas shopping season at the moment, but with retailers fully focused on their festive strategies, an interesting new study has come out showing how consumers have behaved during the last two holiday seasons in the UK, US and Europe.

It comes from True Fit, the data-driven personalisation platform for footwear and clothing retailers, which analysed its data and found that while consumer shopping happens throughout the entire holiday season, the period including Black Friday has established itself as the peak time in the three regions.

This period is known as ‘Cyber 5’, although the fact that consumers are also increasingly shopping in the days before and after means it’s more of a ‘Cyber 7’ these days, the company said.

While shopping used to pick up in early December, November's Black Friday activity these days leads to a drop-off as December gets under way. And the duration of that drop-off is very dependent on the timing of Black Friday. The slow period lasted only a week in 2019 as Black Friday came late in November, but was longer in 2018 when Black Friday was a week earlier.

Shopping picks up again in earnest on December 15 and it’s interesting too that in the UK and Europe, post-festive season shopping remained consistently high into the New Year, while in the US traffic dropped. In Europe overall, data showed consumers are shopping consistently with increased traffic lasting two weeks.
 
So what are people buying during these periods? Consistent across 2018 and 2019, women’s tops led the most popular items purchased, suggesting that party season might be less about dresses and more about ringing the changes with different tops these days. 

In fact, dresses didn’t figure in the overall top 5 for the three regions combined in either 2018 or 2019. But they seemed to be more popular in the UK. Last year dresses took third spot, while for the EU they were in fourth place, but weren't in the top section for the US.

However, 2019 also saw a rise in women’s shoe purchases. This was due to shoppers buying both gifts and personal items, especially in the US. Shoes were in second place there last year, despite not figuring in the top 5s for the UK or EU.
 
Romney Evans, co-Founder of True Fit, said: “The 2019 golden quarter was different from the 2018 holiday season, given the break between Cyber 5 and Christmas was one-week shorter compared to 2018. We are seeing consumer behaviour in the UK and Europe indicate an overall increase in traffic for the entire shopping season meaning retailers must use data to plan peak trading promotions across regions to appeal to this varied consumer behaviour.”