Apparel and accessories top gift list for last-minute holiday shoppers

By

Robin Driver

Published
Dec 24, 2020

A recent study from online payment service Klarna has revealed that clothing and accessories are favorite gift categories for last-minute holiday shoppers this year, mentioned by 78% of consumers still making purchases.
 

Other top gift categories for those who still haven’t ticked all the items off their festive shopping lists include electronics, which were cited by 45% of the consumers surveyed by Klarna, gift cards (44%) and home goods (33%).
 
Overall, Klarna found that 79% of consumers had left their holiday shopping until the last minute in 2020 and were still buying gifts within the last two weeks before Christmas. Among these shoppers, 35% were planning to make the last of their holiday purchases in the week before Christmas.

Even in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, 64% of the last-minute shoppers surveyed by Klarna planned to do the last of their holiday shopping in stores. This trend was fairly evenly distributed across different age groups, with 67% of Gen Zers, 64% of Millennials, 63% of Gen Xers, 58% of Baby Boomers and 57% of Silent Gen-ers intending to hit brick-and-mortar stores for their last-minute shopping.
 
“Klarna's Last-Minute Christmas Shopping Survey has uncovered many interesting consumer shopping trends for retailers to consider as we count down to the holidays, including that the majority of US shoppers plan to shop in physical retail stores for last-minute gifts this year,” said David Sykes, head of U.S. at Klarna, in a release.
 
“This is consistent across all age groups, including the digitally-inclined younger generations such as Gen Z and Millennials, and illustrates how valuable the in-store shopping experience is, even in today's current climate,” he explained.
 
Curbside pickup was, nonetheless, mentioned as an advantage by those intending to head into physical retail spaces in the last days before Christmas. Indeed, 27% of last-minute shoppers said that they would only go to physical stores if there was a curbside pickup option available.
 
Pondering the reasons behind the popularity of physical retail among last-minute holiday shoppers during the ongoing health crisis, Klarna suggested that delivery times might be an issue for online shoppers trying to get gifts to friends and family in time for Christmas.
 
However, delivery windows don’t seem to be a concern for everybody. Interestingly, 55% of last-minute shoppers told Klarna that they would buy gifts online even if they couldn’t be delivered in time for Christmas, with 64% of men and 53% of women saying that they planned to do so.
 
The data for Klarna’s study was taken from a survey of 40,488 U.S. Klarna users from December 12 through 14, 2020.