Baby Boomers Lead Last-Minute Shopping Frenzy This Christmas

Baby boomers (people aged 45 and over) were the generation most responsible for the last-minute shopping rush at Christmas, a new study from customer payments and insight specialist The Logic Group reveals. The study outlines some surprising differences in festive shopping behaviour among different age groups, which should again highlight how important it is for marketers to increase awareness about consumer habits in order to better tailor offers for their target audience.

The research, based on responses from 1,048 consumers, established that baby boomers represented the largest group of holiday shoppers putting off their purchases until the last minute, with 30.8% of them saying they did their Christmas shopping the last week before the holidays. Millennials, on the contrary, emerged as the most organised, with nearly 44% of consumers aged 16-24 purchasing their gifts in November or even earlier.

Gender-wise, there were also notable differences, with men being more likely to leave Christmas shopping to the last minute, as mentioned by a quarter of male respondents. Women appeared to be more organised in this respect, as over half of them said they bought most of their Christmas presents before the start of December.

While doing the Christmas shopping, baby boomers also seemed to have been more active on the high street than online, since the time they spent shopping on the web this Christmas was the lowest among all age groups. The researcher estimated that they stayed an average of four hours and 40 minutes buying products online. By comparison, consumers aged 25-34 dedicated six hours and 19 minutes of their time to online shopping.