At Competitor Monitor we always find some interesting insight in our data. This week we decided to dig into this data in a slightly different way, combining our existing information with some desk research. We thought we would share some results about the Holiday season.
As we all know, the holidays are a time of significant spending for parents and therefore a great opportunity for retailers. But what about the hidden costs in addition to the obvious?
Here are some findings from our research:
· Food and gifts take up a large portion of a parent’s budget, with up to 80% spent on these alone in the run up to Christmas.
· Despite Black Friday discounting and Cyber Monday deals, we have found that many of our monitored retailers have increased their pricing over the past few weeks on key items, toys being an obvious but significant one.
· Tied in with the above, there is a lack of discounting across the board at the moment with very few retailers offering reductions in their lines.
· Although fuel prices have lowered recently, due to the lower price of oil, our bespoke price monitoring for one customer has shown that train ticket prices remain high and there are no low-cost deals for travel until the New Year.
· Visits to attractions such as a trip to see Santa Claus, are often unbudgeted expenses which are becoming more expensive year-on-year with the average attraction now costing £60 for a family of four, before factoring in food. Most families can only visit these festive attractions at weekends when prices are usually higher than during the week. An adult fee is even more expensive than a child’s – usually turning a fun family day trip into a pricey affair.
· According to a survey conducted by a large supermarket chain, on average, parents will spend £312 per child this Christmas – and that’s only on gifts. From our own research, comparing prices of identical products on several of our monitored retail websites could lead to a saving of up to 60%.
We will be monitoring the products above to see how they change in price and availability into January. Feel free to reach out of you have any comments on this article.
