Men Leave It Late To Buy For Christmas

Huge numbers of men will leave it late to do their Christmas shopping on the 23rd of December at lunchtime.

A survey shows men spend €5.6 million euro between 12 and 1pm on that date as they make a last minute dash to the shops.

It's also the busiest day during the festive season for pubs and stores. People from Meath and Kildare spent the most over Christmas and those in Donegal and Louth spent the least.

AIB has revealed that customers spent €3.8 billion in store and online in December 2023. €121m was spent in shops on Friday 22nd December 2023, 130% higher than the average day last year, making it the busiest day of the year for in store shopping, with 2.9 million transactions.

The busiest time of the year for spending in store was between 3pm and 4pm on December 22nd , with almost €12m spent in that hour alone.

The busiest hour for in store shopping by men was between 12pm and 1pm on Saturday 23rd December 2023, spending €5.6m in that hour alone, as they made a last-minute festive dash to the shops.

The data was compiled from over 78 million card transactions carried out by AIB customers in store and online during December 2023 and has been anonymised and aggregated.

For pubs, the busiest day of the holiday season was Saturday 23rd December, with €6.3m spent in total by AIB customers. That’s just 4% lower than the record pub spend in 2023, which happened on St Patrick’s Day.. In the week before Christmas 2023, 65% of the spend in pubs was by men.

• Saturday 23rd December was also the busiest day of the year for grocery shopping in store, with spending 66% higher than the previous Saturday in 2023. In store spending on groceries that day was c. €42m.
• Despite the rise in online shopping, we are still choosing to do our Christmas grocery shop in store. 93% of grocery spend was in store compared to 7% online.
• In the week leading up to Christmas 2023, men spent almost twice as much on jewellery as women.
• When men purchased jewellery, the average transaction was €216, for women it was €110. Almost two thirds of spend on jewellery that week was by men.
• Spend in toy and hobby shops in December 2023 was 178% above the monthly average for the whole of 2023, and was split relatively evenly between men and women (52% women, 48% men). Men spent almost 15% more than women per transaction in toy shops (€70 men, €61 women).

Speaking about the data, Adrian Moynihan, Head of Consumer at AIB said “Christmas is the busiest time of the year for many businesses and they will welcome the fact that this year is on course to be another Christmas cracker, particularly in those final days in the run up to Christmas Day. Spending in toy shops was 178% higher in December than the monthly average for the whole of 2023, while 23rd December is likely to be the busiest day of the year for grocery spend in store. Men appear to leave a lot of their shopping until the last minute, over lunch on the day before Christmas Eve. And retailers can plan for a very busy 22nd and 23rd December, with almost six million transactions in shops over these two days in 2023. It’s great to see people shopping in store as it not only supports Irish businesses and jobs, it also ensures that the products we buy have a lower carbon footprint as they aren’t traveling hundreds of kilometres before reaching us.”