Last-minute Christmas shopping isn't some weird, stressful anomaly: it's a way of life.
According to a November survey by the National Retail Federation, 55.7% started their holiday shopping before December, but just 2.9% finished. Though 36.7% of shoppers had more than 50% of their holiday shopping done by the end of December, 44.3% hadn't even started yet.
So how's that going to play out? Well, in the survey that the NRF released on December 15 of last year, the average holiday shopper had completed just 53.5% of their shopping by early December. That's similar to the 52.9% who responded the same way at that stage of the 2014 holiday shopping season. In all, just 10% of holiday shoppers said they were done.
What takes these people so long? Well, holiday procrastinators are the undecided voters of retail: slow and eager to complain. Last year, 44.8% of late shoppers said they were still trying to decided between gifts. Another 28.8% said they wait until mid to late December, because their friends and family haven't given them enough ideas as to what they want. Another 22% think there's some better deal -- better than what they received on Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Cyber Tuesday, Green Monday, Free Shipping Day etc. -- waiting later in the year while just 20.8% admit they're procrastinators.
When asked when they would purchase their last gift, one-third (33.4%) said sometime before December 18, while 10.2% planned to wait until December 23. However, nobody in retail discourages this kind of behavior. In fact, the entire industry is now built abound it.
