By: Natasha Archary
What are the festive gifting trends for South Africans this year? More importantly, are consumers splurging on gifts for family and friends, or focusing on the bare essentials as the cost of living crisis grips wallets and purses?
According to Stats SA, as well as latest research and analytics from Eighty20, the answer is quite sad.
Andrew Fulton, Director at Eighty20 joins Gugulethu Mfuphi on Kaya Biz, to share that household budgets are severely stretched, to the point where gifts this festive season may lack magic.
Based on sales trends from Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Andrew shares that there has been a marked decline across all major categories in the past year.
Purchases on essential goods such as food, airtime, clothing and cosmetics have seen a relatively small decline of 5%.
Other “nice-to-haves” such as electronics, games, toys, and common gifting items have dropped by more than 20% year-on-year.
This shows that South Africans are not splurging because food items are priority buys, followed by other essential items such as clothing, and school necessities.
“Based on data from the MAPS survey, what we’ve noticed in terms of overall spending leading into the festive season is that electronics and games have gone down 20% year-on-year.
Home improvement, the biggest loser went down by 25%.
Remember this is 25% of people are saying they’re spending less, not that sales in this category has gone down by 25%.
One of the more worrying one, a 16% drop in clothing, something I would consider an essential, is clearly a luxury for many.”
Andrew says most people are probably going to lean into credit to make the festive season a little magical for their families and loved ones.
Listen to the conversation on Kaya Biz:
Also read: Treasury to cut tertiary funding by R13,7 billion for over 87,000 university students
