Clearpay Festive Insights Unwrapped: UK Edition
Shopper sentiment, spending plans, and strategies to help you win the season
UK shoppers are heading into the 2025 festive season with rising costs, tighter savings, and bigger expectations. Our latest report shows how they are adapting, and where your business can capture the opportunity.
Key festive highlights
Festive stress is up
36% of consumers feel financially stressed about festive expenses, and 33% say their stress is higher than last year.
Shoppers are adapting, not abandoning
46% plan to shop early. 38% will set strict budgets. 37% plan to save up and spend less.
Early vs. late shopping patterns
37% will shop mainly in September and October. 35% will wait until November.
Self-care is a festive staple
78% plan to buy self-care items, led by food & grocery (42%), health & beauty (41%), home comfort (36%), and hobbies/creative (28%).
BNPL is key to budgeting
35% of UK consumers plan to use BNPL this season, with strong adoption among Gen Z (52%), and Millennials (48%).
What this means for your business.
Shoppers are not pulling back. They are planning earlier, blending online and offline shopping, and making deliberate choices about value.
To capture the season, merchants should:
Promote offers early to reach planners, but stay visible through December for deal-seekers.
Highlight BNPL options across all channels, from apps to tills.
Lean into high-demand categories like apparel, food, beauty, and self-care.
Position flexibility and wellbeing alongside traditional gifting campaigns.
Get Your Free Festive Insights Report
The Festive Insights Unwrapped Report dives deep into shopper sentiment, spending patterns, and category shifts. It’s packed with data and insights to help you understand how shoppers are approaching the season and where your business can capture the opportunity.
Put Insights Into Action
We have created ready-to-use Festive Marketing Assets to help you connect with UK shoppers. Adding Clearpay messaging across your channels gives customers more reasons to shop with you. From gifting to self-care, Clearpay helps them spread costs responsibly and shop with confidence.
Morning Consult’s Afterpay Global Holiday Shopping Survey (July 2025) was conducted between July 17th - 28th, 2025 among n2,202 Adults aged 18-65 and n240 Retail BDMs in the UK. All interviews were conducted online. The margin of error was +/- 2% for Adults, +/- 6% for Retail BDMs, and varied among subgroups. All subgroups highlighted in reporting have a base N size of 50 or more unless otherwise stated.
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