Cyber Monday. It’s an odd phrase, more likely to conjure apocalyptic visions of a Terminator-style machine invasion than a frenzied day of online shopping.
Like Black Friday, Cyber Monday is relatively new to these shores. In just a few short years, it’s become part of the year’s busiest spending weekend, with both days book-ending a four-day shopping spree. This year it looks like Cyber Monday will overtake Black Friday in terms of sales as people shift towards online spending. Experts predict that UK shoppers will increase spending by a fifth to £1.9 billion today.
Amid all this hype, however, is the very real prospect that falling for retailers’ hyperbole surrounding the last payday before Christmas will result in an untold number of pointless purchases. A case in point is a news clip from Friday. The presenter interviewed a couple with two super-sized televisions in their trolley. They admitted to buying two teles because of price reductions. They didn’t need two, they probably didn’t even need one. But they bought them anyway.
Which brings me to new research from Sainsbury’s Bank. We’re all guilty of that last-minute present dash, the ‘damn, I still haven’t bought Aunt Edna’s gift’, which inevitably leads us down the ‘I’ll buy anything aisle as long as I have something to wrap’. Sainsbury’s has coined a phrase for this behaviour: ‘guilty gifters’.
According to the bank, more than two-thirds of self-confessed ‘guilty gifters’ put no thought into present-buying while a similar number admit they have no idea what the recipient would like. A fifth give the same present every year (who hasn’t made repeat purchases of socks and scarves for distant relatives) and 18 per cent say they don’t give a fig whether the person likes the gift or not. And then there’s the one in ten who know their aunt/uncle/friend/colleague etc won’t like the present but they buy it anyway.
This doesn’t say much for the festive spirit – and there’s clearly a difference between eleventh hour Christmas shopping and a deliberate laissez-faire approach to presents. One is vaguely forgivable, the other is just plain rude, even if the term ‘guilty gifter’ suggests a modicum of remorse.
Then there are the other categories. Sainsbury’s Bank’s research suggests that almost a fifth of people identify themselves as ‘casual gifters’, putting in just enough effort into what they buy so they don’t feel guilty. ‘Re-gifters’ (5 per cent) are those who admit to recycling gifts. Of this last tranche, many say they recycled a present because it was so good they didn’t want it to go to waste (if you believe that, you’ll believe anything) while others claimed they knew the recipient would like it more than they did or they wanted to adopt a ‘green’ approach to Christmas.
Although there’s something to be said for cutting down on needless waste, I’ll take it with a large pinch of salt. Could it be that we are too polite to tell someone we hate their present? Or, in these straitened times, are we really just looking to save money? Christmas can break the bank and there are countless pieces of evidence which show we end up paying for the festive season well into the new year.
So, what’s the solution? As with most things, it’s about exercising common sense. Do you really need to buy Great Uncle Gerald yet another pair of socks? In fact, do the two of you really need to exchange gifts at all? (I know, bah humbug). And wouldn’t asking your best friend what they really want for Christmas be better than a random purchase from John Lewis?
Above all, don’t get caught in the Black Friday/Cyber Monday trap and buy something just because it’s a few quid cheaper for a few hours. That way madness lies.
Helen Nugent is Online Money Editor of The Spectator
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