Survey on consumer behavior: Saving this Christmas
Around a quarter of consumers want to spend less on Christmas this year than last year and 15% do not want to give any presents at all. These are the findings of a new representative survey conducted by the Zurich-based online market research institute Marketagent.com Switzerland.
In the survey conducted in October, 1000 people from German-speaking and French-speaking Switzerland between the ages of 14 and 65 provided information on where they plan to buy presents this year and how much they intend to spend, among other things.
A quarter want to spend less, one in seven want to spend nothing at all
The majority of respondents plan to spend the same amount on gifts as last year (70%). However, a remarkable 24% say they want to dig less deep into their pockets this year. Only 6 percent want to spend more.
15 percent of respondents also stated that they did not want to give any gifts at all. In a comparable survey conducted by Marketagent.com Switzerland three years ago, the proportion of those who did not want to give any gifts was similarly high at 15.5%.
Gifts are (mainly) bought in Switzerland
The majority of Christmas spending will remain in Switzerland. When asked where the respondents wanted to buy their presents, 69% answered in stores in Switzerland, 44% wanted to buy presents in a Swiss online store (multiple answers possible).
Around a fifth of respondents also want to shop on foreign websites, primarily on Amazon. However, only 14 percent plan to buy their gifts in stores across the border.
Food and toys are favorites
At the top of the shopping list are food and toys (32% and 29% respectively) and perfumes, cosmetics and personal care items (26%), followed by clothes, shoes and accessories (22%) and cash (21%).
Online: Men prefer Digitec, women Zalando
The first choice among online stores is Galaxus.ch (40%), followed by Digitech.ch and Zalando.ch (29% each), Amazon.de/Amazon.com (27%) and Mediamarkt.ch (20%).
While women and men mentioned Galaxus.ch with its full range of products with similar frequency, the situation is different for its sister company Digitec.ch, which specializes in electronics. 39 percent of men said they wanted to buy gifts here, compared to only half of women (19 percent). The order is reversed at Zalando.ch: around a third of women want to shop here, compared to a quarter of men.
Marketagent.com Switzerland is a research institute specializing in quantitative and qualitative online market and opinion research and has an ISO-certified survey panel in Switzerland with over 60,000 participants between the ages of 14 and 74 (as of November 2019).
