Where did Christmas go in 2008?

Back in December some of the retailers I worked with were struggling with their Christmas sales targets, and I needed a benchmark to see what was going on. To do this, I compared year on year Google search volumes for the term “christmas gifts”. It looked then as if 2008’s Christmas searches were later and fewer than in 2007. Now that Christmas is well and truly over and the dust has settled, I thought it would be interesting to see how it finally ended up.

The chart above was created using data from Google Insights for Search, and shows relative search volumes for the search term “Christmas gifts” on Google UK.

As you can see, the peaks are at exactly the same time each year, but the build up in 2008 was much later, and the volume over 20% lower. Interestingly this partially contradicts IMRG data which suggests that online sales volumes were up year on year, although average transaction value was down, with people buying less expensive presents.

Retailers are already looking towards the coming Christmas (yes, I know it’s only January), and wondering what it will be like this time around. At the moment, it seems like it could be anyone’s guess.