What gifts are consumers shopping for this Christmas?

As an independent business, deciding where to focus your marketing efforts during the Christmas shopping period can be challenging.

Maybe* recently teamed up with BIRA (British Independent Retailer Association) to discover how consumers plan to shop during the holiday season. By creating a conversation around Christmas shopping using a chatbot, over 5,000 insights were gathered about the types of gifts people are buying and how they plan to buy them this year.

"Conversation is how you deliver results through social media. We have proven the ability to predict trends simply by asking shoppers what they are planning on buying and how they prefer to shop. Our insights help retailers tweak their online and offline strategies to meet the needs of their shoppers, to great success."

Polly Barnfield OBE, CEO and Founder of Maybe*

The project has revealed key information about consumer shopping behaviour during the holiday season, giving businesses the knowledge to connect with potential customers.

For example, the study found that 62.8% of people asked prefer to shop online for gifts, however, 61,5% of people also said they prefer to shop at local gift boutiques - highlighting the need for local boutiques to have a website with the ability to order online.

This report offers new insights into which gifts people are buying for men and women, preferences between independent and national shops, to the hashtags shoppers most commonly use when looking for unique gifts online.