Christmas day e-sales bolster total Q4 online spend

Record numbers log on to shop on Christmas night

Total UK online sales for the last quarter of 2007 are expected to come in at £17.6bn, up 82 per cent on the £9.6bn recorded for the same period in 2006, the Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG) has revealed.

The quarter is always bolstered bythe run up to Christmas, but this year the nation continued to spend online on Christmas day itself with 4.4 million people buying goods over the internet on Christmas Day, racking up a total of £84m, 269 per cent more than last year.

James Roper, chief executive of IMRG, said: "The only way we Brits can enjoy the nation’s favourite leisure activity - shopping - on Christmas Day, is online. So it is hardly surprising that millions of us now do a spot of Yuletide bargain hunting. As you would expect, people flock to the online shops later in the day than usual on Christmas Day, generally, after the Queen's Speech, with the main action happening between 8pm and 10pm, and the e-tills keep ringing right up till midnight."

DeVere Forster, director of Dixons.co.uk, said: “The sort of products customers are looking for on Christmas Day are TVs, mobile phones, digital cameras, MP3 players, digital photo frames, washing machines, tumble driers, fridges and freezers - and they are often able to snap up sales bargains in comfort, rather than fighting the crowds on the high street on Boxing Day.”

Chris Russell, director of market research firm eDigital Research, added: "A new development we saw this year was retailers such as Argos encouraging shoppers to shop online on Christmas Day, where the sales started a day earlier than traditional stores. Combined with the expected sale of “top-ups” for Christmas gifts online, i.e. those who have received an iPod for Christmas logging on to buy songs on iTunes, online retailers had a busier Christmas Day in 2007 than ever before.”

IMRG's current estimate for full year 2007 e-retail sales stands at £53.3bn, 76 per cent higher than the £30.2bn recorded for 2006, and well over the £42bn IMRG originally estimated at the start of 2007.