Memories of working in a customer service department for a major online retailer include trying to work out why some people were phoning on Boxing Day and winging instead of being with their families and celebrating being together. Customers would place orders late on Christmas Eve expecting their parcels to arrive on their doorstep by courier pigeon- and all neatly wrapped with bows- which obviously wasn't/isn't ever the case.
A few statistics have been thrown together in order for us to understand our own shopping habits in the lead up to Christmas.
Last years' Christmas for example saw record numbers of purchases being made in the lead up to Christmas within the UK. There are some particularly interesting results that were released in January this year just after the season starts to close down and bearing in mind we were clawing out of a recession at this point.
The 7th December (nicknamed Cyber Monday) remained the biggest shopping day of the year last year with a peak hit of online sales at 3million- and all that money taken between 13:00 and 14:00- lunch time.
The average number of orders placed online was up by 94% compared to the same period in 2008 the year before and the number of goods that were purchased per transaction increased from an average of 2 in 2007 to 3 in 2009.
This is the most astonishing figure of all- even though we were in a recession we still managed to spend a massive 132million on Christmas Day alone (online obviously) in 2009 and that this was an increase of 29% over Christmas the year before.
So what does this tell us other than we've been finding more and more online mini car deals, Scotland and the rest of the UK are clearly switched on when it comes to a little bit of Christmas buying savvy!