Why does Christmas come so early?

The grumps who year after year rail against Christmas items arriving at retailers the day after Halloween were well served this year, since many retailers did not wait until November to promote their holiday merchandise.

Consumers are asking for it, believes Jean-Philippe Gauthier, director of digital transformation at Google. In recent years, Google has noted a strong increase in searches for “Christmas gifts” from 1^is september. Google’s data doesn’t specify when people who are searching take action and buy their gifts.

However, consumer surveys confirm that hasty purchases are more common.

A pan-Canadian survey by the firm PwC even specified last month that it is young people and particularly generation Z – therefore from adolescence to the end of the twenties – who make their purchases the most quickly: one in five consumers belonging to this age group has already done the majority of their Christmas shopping (as they planned to get most of it done before Thanksgiving). Overall, it’s more like 10% of consumers do their holiday shopping before Thanksgiving.

According to Jean-Philippe Gauthier, the fact that consumers see Christmas items earlier at retailers encourages them to also start their search earlier. “People are exposed to the fact that Christmas is coming, it’s the holiday season and they want to start finding the right gift,” he says.

It’s the chicken or the egg.

The research begins earlier, we know that. “If the retailer is not there, with its Christmas guide or its products, if it is not able to respond to this search, it will miss a sales opportunity,” says Mr. Gauthier.

Jean-Philippe Gauthier makes this very important point: online searches are the window shopping of yesteryear. We get inspired and then we decide. Hence the importance for retailers to be in the picture.

Myriam Ertz, professor in the marketing department at the University of Quebec at Chicoutimi, also believes that, sometimes even without us fully realizing it, a festive environment encourages us to think about buying gifts.

“People see it, they don’t pay attention to it, but it’s embedded in their subconscious,” says Professor Ertz, who specifies that studies confirm the extent to which the environment influences consumer behavior.

And this environment is omnipresent: the storm of Christmas catalogs, virtual or paper, has begun; Amazon opened its “Christmas store” on October 24. The logs have arrived in certain supermarkets and pastry chefs are taking their Christmas orders. The most popular florists have already posted the dates of their wreath workshops.

As all of this is omnipresent on social networks, young people are particularly exposed to it.

“The same stimuli that we see in stores are on applications,” says Myriam Ertz, who believes this explains why young people are shopping earlier.

Very practical reasons can also explain hasty purchases, such as fear of running out of stock.

“People have had the experience in the past of not finding the gifts they are really looking for,” says M.^me Ertz.

According to this consumer specialist, some customers plan their purchases to spread them over a longer period – and several credit card accounts.

She adds that consumers who shop online want to know there will be no delivery delays.

What are we looking for?

According to Jean-Philippe Gauthier of Google, searches carried out by consumers have become more precise in the last two or three years. “Before, we were looking for ‘best computer,’” he says. People wanted to have the best computer. Today, they are going to look for “best computer for video editing”. The word “for” is added to the search. »

Another surprising fact noted by Google analysts: people are looking less for price and more for quality. “They are going to look for the best product,” says Mr. Gauthier. This data is in the same direction as the conclusions of the Outlook for the 2024 Holiday Season published last month by PwC which states that consumers have increased the budget allocated to their gifts this year – and particularly younger ones.

Ultimately, the closer Christmas approaches, the more consumers want to shop in stores, according to PwC data. Beyond the fear of not receiving the package on time, the holiday spirit with Santa Claus on site and the ambient music still manages to melt the hearts of even the most grumpy. In part…