Revealed: What shoppers hate about Christmas - long queues and Cliff Richard's Mistletoe and Wine

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) December 19, 2011 -- Cliff Richard’s 1988 hit Mistletoe and Wine is the Christmas song nearly half of shoppers (46.7%) would like to never hear again, according to a new survey.

Wizzard’s 1974 hit I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day is the second most unpopular song (16.7%) followed by Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas? (11.7%), Wham’s Last Christmas (8.3%), Slade’s Merry Christmas Everyone (8.3%) and Brenda Lee’s Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree (8.3%).

More than six out of ten (62.9%) of shoppers find long queues the most annoying part of Christmas shopping and 12.9% of respondents say they are most annoyed by stores putting Christmas displays up too early and 11.3% of people hate not being able to find advertised products.

2011 is set to be a cut price Christmas for many shoppers with nearly half (48.6%) of people saying they’ve cut down on what they spend on relatives this Christmas - and nearly one in five (18.9%) say they don’t plan to splash out as much as usual on their partner. Children will fare better, with just 13.5% of parents saying they’ve cut back spending on their kids and 18.9% of people say they plan to cut back on what they spend on Christmas dinner and drinks.

The survey, by mystery shopping and performance improvement expert Douglas Stafford, also revealed that 63.9% of shoppers are annoyed by hearing Christmas music playing in stores too early with more than nine out of ten people (93.6%) saying shops shouldn’t put festive songs on until December.

More than one in three shoppers (35.5%) say that hearing Christmas songs in shops makes them feel happy and more likely to continue shopping but 16.1% say they find the music irritating and are likely to be put off. 48.4% say they don’t mind the music or don’t notice it.

“The results of this survey make it very clear that high street retailers need to do everything they can to attract and keep customers – and that includes concentrating on keeping queues to a minimum,” says Nigel Cook, Douglas Stafford Chief Executive. “

“We know that people are likely to be spending less this year so it is vital that high street retailers do everything they can to make the customer experience better and if they don’t then more people will go elsewhere, including online, to buy. And it seems that improving customer experience might even extend to banning Mistletoe and Wine from stores.”

About Douglas Stafford

Portsmouth-based Douglas Stafford has been working with large blue chip companies across a broad range of consumer markets since 1989, delivering performance improvement programmes which help them measure, analyse, understand and improve their customers’ experiences. These are achieved through highly cost-effective mystery shopping and customer surveys, and are supported by industry-leading training programmes and processes that are proven to improve standards of customer service. Among its clients are some of Britain’s leading brands including Fitness First, Taylor Wimpey, Kwik Fit and Audi UK. www.douglasstafford.com

ENDS

For further information please contact:
info@nowpr.co.uk

christmas music     christmas shopping statistics     Douglas Stafford     Mystery Shopping