How much Austrians are spending on gifts this year

Although inflation is leveling off, it remains at a high level for the second year in a row and is increasingly eating into private households’ purchasing budgets: This will also be reflected in Christmas shopping this year. Austrians will buy slightly fewer gifts this year; initial projections suggest the decline will be two percent. However, as prices continue to rise, they will spend around two percent more on gifts. This emerges from a study by the Institute for Trade, Sales and Marketing (IHaM) at the Johannes Kepler University Linz: “The astonishing crisis resistance of Christmas spending will continue this year,” says Ernst Gittenberger, head of the Center of Retail and Consumer Research at IHaM.

In total, Austrians are expected to spend 2.32 billion euros at Christmas this year: That would make up around 2.5 percent of annual retail spending. Spending in stationary retail will increase by 40 million to 1.89 billion euros. 53 percent will also buy gifts online: spending on this will level off at the previous year’s level at around 430 million euros. To what extent domestic online retail will benefit from this remains to be seen: More than half of online gift spending will flow to international online shops/platforms. Two thirds of online shoppers will buy gifts from the US online giant Amazon, and a sixth will order from the new Chinese platform Temu (read more about this here).

Crises shape the Christmas business

The Christmas business has also been characterized by crises in recent years: The Covid pandemic turned retail on its head in 2020 and led to massive shifts towards online retail due to the lockdowns: 2.02 billion euros were spent, an increase of one percent. 24 percent went to the Internet. 2021 was also marked by lockdowns (between November 11th and December 12th), a total of 2.08 billion euros were spent – Austrians got used to the lockdowns or circumvented them by buying gifts in shops that were not closed, Give away vouchers or use Click&Collect.

Last year, prices rose massively and inflation was higher than it had been since the 1970s. Spending increased by ten percent, which is roughly in line with the average retail price increases in the run-up to Christmas. So Austrians stopped shopping but spent more on gifts. Total expenditure was 2.28 billion euros, 19 percent went to the internet (2020: 24 percent). In the last year without a crisis, 2019, Austrians spent around two billion euros on gifts, 18 percent in online shops.