Christmas 2015: Tesco, Sainsbury and Asda predicted to clean up this festive season – but Aldi, M&S and Lidl will beat Morrisons
Black Friday might be set to be less of a big deal this year but Christmas is going nowhere.
In fact, the UK is expected to spend £16.5bn on food, drink and presents during the festive season – up 2.5 per cent from last year. That's an average of £442 per person, according to data from Conlumino.
Nearly three-quarters of us (73 per cent) will either spend more or the same on gifts as they did last year, with an average spend of £282.70 – up 3.6 per cent on 2014.
People are also taking longer to shop for gifts, spending an average of 10.4 hours getting the perfect present. Much of that time will be spent browsing online, however, with four in 10 of us planning to use our mobiles to search for festive purchases.
The research, conducted on behalf of Webloyalty, suggested that despite retailers rushing to launch their Christmas ad campaigns in November, more than a third of us won't start shopping until December.
More shoppers (56.3 per cent) will buy gifts for their partners than their parents (34 per cent), and more will buy gifts for friends (22.7 per cent) than for their wider family (20.1 per cent).
The Christmas meal remains the centrepiece of the festival, and more than half of us will spend over £150 on food. But who will clean up this year?
Well Tesco remains top of the Christmas tree, despite its well-documented troubles. In fact three of the Big Four remain dominant for our festive shopping.
[infographic id="407"]
However challengers Aldi and Lidl – not forgetting Marks & Spencer – are expected to push Morrisons down to seventh place for the period.
Guy Chiswick, managing director of Webloyalty Northern Europe said: "Looking through the research it is positive to see that Christmas spending is continuing to grow year on year. This is partly due to low inflation and heavy price competition within the grocery sector, which has eased some of the pressure on household finances in recent months and helped to boost consumer confidence.
"This increase in spending could make this Christmas the best for retailers since the recession.”