Boxing Day Blues, Gift Cards, and Why Piers Morgan Hates Me

Customers are getting wise to the Boxing Day Blues. Gifts that drop to half price two days after Christmas, last-minute discount emails, and retailers training shoppers to hold back are fuelling frustration and eroding trust.

Hi, I'm Clare Bailey, founder of Retail Champion.

In this episode, I explain how post-Christmas behaviour has shifted, why bargain hunting is now a year-round reflex, and what retailers can actually do about it.

I look at the rise of cash, gift cards and experiences, the emotional shift from “stuff” to “memories,” and what the data is showing us about who’s buying what. I also explore the truth about unredeemed gift cards, and why pairing products with small experiences can boost value perception.

Then we take a look at Boxing Day trading culture itself. Should staff work? Should shops stay open? And what really happens when teams feel unsupported at the busiest time of year?

Finally, I lay out the simplest solution of all: honesty. And how you can apply that to your business as a retail decision maker.

What are you waiting for? Click play to hear all the insights.

Chapters:

00:00 — Introduction: The Boxing Day Blues

00:20 — The Gift Receipt Era

01:06 — Why Shoppers Feel Cheated

02:23 — Scarcity, FOMO and Late Buying

03:40 — The Game of Chicken

04:41 — Cash, Gift Cards and Digital Wallets

05:34 — The Gift Card Secret

06:00 — The Experience Boom

07:11 — Pairing Products With Experiences

08:13 — Boxing Day Betrayal

08:52 — The Price Promise Solution

09:49 — Should Retail Staff Work Boxing Day?

11:19 — Resentment on the Shop Floor

11:42 — Final Retail Reckoning

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Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Today, I'm diving into the Boxing Day blues. Why more people
are ditching physical presents, how cash, gift cards and
experiences are beginning to take over and what smart retailers can do to keep the
trust and loyalty and the profits intact.
You know that sinking feeling when you've just found the perfect

(00:24):
gift, wrapped it beautifully and handed it over with pride
and two days later, it's half price online. Annoying, isn't it?
It's changing Christmas shopping faster than you can say Boxing Day sale. So
it's become the new festive tradition. You've spent 60 quid on something
and you've given it as a gift with pride. Bing. Sale now.
On. There it is in your email. Same product, 30 quid.

(00:47):
Merry Christmas. No. No wonder we keep
those gift receipts. Yeah. Retail
reckoning. Retail reckonin.
No space for dusty shelves. Cause
retail reckon.

(01:07):
According to Retail Economics, in 2023, 30% of
shoppers felt cheated by post Christmas discounts.
That's a lot. That's not festive cheer, that's
festive grumbling. And it's also creating a trust issue. Once
customers are feeling let down, they don't just stop buying, they actually
start, well, watching, searching,

(01:28):
analysing. They're waiting, doing the comparison
sites, looking for vouchers and running Google
shopping results and so on. You've now created a bargain hunter
for life. But retail's responsible for creating this monster.
Our industry is as good as trained customers to wait.
And every year we've reinforced the deals start after

(01:51):
Christmas. Now, the only thing that might make a difference is either
I've really got to have this for the festivities. For example, you've got guests
coming over and the mattress in the spare room's all a bit saggy,
so you must have a new mattress for Christmas. Fair enough. It's not really a
gift either, is it? The only other one that works is when it's gone, it's
gone. Scarcity factor brings on fomo. Fear of

(02:13):
missing out. So that's the only type of product where I think they
can get away with getting the customer to buy. I suppose
pretty much everything else. It's now become awkward. You're
not sure because post Christmas we're seeing more and more buyers
remorse and it's actually affecting our behavior. The
ONS have said that a quarter of purchases in 2024

(02:37):
were happening in the final week before Christmas and that's 20%
more than five years ago. That's not just procrastination,
that's people thinking hard about whether they should or shouldn't
buy. And despite
lots of people who obviously suffering cost of living crisis and trying to spread
their spending so it doesn't all land on the January bank balance or

(02:59):
card balance. They're waiting and they're worried about that
awful sinking feeling when something they've just spent a fortune on is
half price the next day. It's just that upset, that
seriously annoying feeling. And it makes people feel like the
retailers are playing games with them, because if they can sell it for that price
one day later, were they ripping me off this time?

(03:22):
So essentially, customers have been holding back and it's been happening for years.
There used to be a really steady spend from about the
beginning of December and I remember years ago when I was doing some
consultancy with Woolworths. That is a long time ago, because obviously they've not
been around for a while, but you can have a look at the demand
profile and it was relatively consistent throughout the whole of December.

(03:45):
More recently, it's pretty flat for most of December. And then there's
this massive great peak because people are holding off and they're
waiting for emails, they're waiting for discount vouchers. Get 50% off.
Now, using the code retailreckoning, and I call
it the game of chicken between the customer and the retailer. But the
customer's winning because the retailers are panicking. Now,

(04:08):
if customers are holding back spend on gift products and seasonal
stock, at what point do the retailers have to drop the prices
and break into sale mode? And over the last few years, we've seen that
happening even before Christmas, because they've got so much
gift stock that nobody's buying yet, because they've got this if I
wait little discount.

(04:33):
The other thing that shoppers are doing to avoid feeling bad
about gifting is they're giving things like cash,
gift cards, even digital wallets these days.
Apparently gift card sales jumped 12%
year on year in 2024, especially for
the quite high value brackets. The thing is, this is

(04:55):
quite clever psychologically. The giver is avoiding
their buyer's remorse. The receiver's got freedom to go and buy whatever they
actually want and they feel smart. But
what I know from previous analytics is a
massive proportion of gift cards never get redeemed.

(05:16):
So that must mean there's billions of pounds that's been spent with retailers
sitting in drawers or in wallets or in expired accounts.
Actually, this is a bit of a win for the retailers because they've had the
cash upfront, they've not had to give out any stock. There's no risk
of a refund whilst the customer thinks they've been quite clever.
Cash is king for me. I certainly feel like gift cards

(05:40):
are sort of cash that's constrained to where you're allowed to
spend it, whereas cash is in fact obviously spendable anywhere.
So if anybody's thinking about giving a gift card this year, based on the fact
that they hardly ever get redeemed, or only something like a small proportion get
redeemed, I go with the cash idea. There's been a bit of an
emotional shift too, and I think this is especially since COVID

(06:02):
because people couldn't be with loved ones and they're
investing more in buying memories rather than merchandise. So
it's sort of experience over stuff. Barclays
has shown that there's been a 5 to 7% year on year growth
on things like dining, theatre, spa days and travel instead,
instead of gifting. And the age range for that is especially 25 to

(06:24):
40. So that's going to be younger people going out, perhaps as
couples, friend groups or perhaps families. And
I think we've all got too much stuff. I'm not sure
customers really want to own much more stuff, but they like to feel
something. So that day out with the kids or the theatre ticket,
mini break or spa day, it's the sense of

(06:47):
we did something together with some photographs, maybe Instagram moments and
so on. They're the new status symbols. So
retailers need to be quite creative. What can you do to
connect a product to an experience to encourage
somebody to buy it? So maybe something
very low cost, could be an artisan or a personalised

(07:09):
mug, but with a coffee shop voucher. Or
you might give a voucher towards a spa day with
a makeup set or a pampering set or even some nice candles.
Or it might be a homeware type item
paired with a contribution to somebody doing an interior

(07:30):
styling session for you, who knows? But it's
all about this emotion and value perception. And
honestly, to me, emotion and value are
inextricably linked and they never go out of fashion.

(07:52):
But here's where the industry becomes its own worst enemy.
The minute those shops shut on Christmas Eve, and I'm sure you've seen it
yourselves, the emails start coming in online sales live now.
Yeah, okay. It kills off dead stock and, you know, it gets rid of stuff
that perhaps you don't need beyond Christmas. It doesn't just kill
off stock, though, it kills off goodwill because from the customer's point of view, you

(08:14):
feel betrayed. What if you've just been out all day scrambling around
the shops last minute because you've been at work and you've only got Christmas Eve
to do your shopping and 20 minutes after you get a cup of tea and
sit down and put your feet up, your phone goes mad with emails telling you
everything you've just bought is 40% off. It's not festive
cheer. It's downright upsetting for me, though. What's the solution?

(08:36):
Honesty, Integrity. That would help, wouldn't it?
I actually think there's a brilliant solution. It's a price
promise and I've seen it done by a couple of
businesses whereby if you buy before Christmas,
they say if our price drops within seven days or 14
days of Christmas, we will refund the difference.

(08:58):
Now, okay, that's given away margin. But what it is
doing is it's making people have the confidence to buy and
it's giving them back the power to think, well, I prefer to give a gift.
I like to see my kids unwrap something and watch their faces.
I don't want them to just open an envelope with a tenner or 20 quid
in it. So it makes it so that Boxing Day isn't a

(09:19):
loyalty disaster. We mustn't forget,
actually, what makes Christmas happen in store is the people, the
staff. And a lot of retailers are actually choosing out. There's
been all sorts of campaigns. I remember quite a few years ago now, I was
on Good Morning Britain with Piers Morgan. I pulled a funny face and
made him swear at the time. People like you are encouraging the nation

(09:41):
to, on these special days to start shopping again
when they could just have a day off. 22 million other people, not
just people like me, are wanting to shop on Boxing Day because all these deals.
But hang on, that is because all these extraordinary
deals are being made available on Christmas Day and Boxing
Day. My argument is, don't let them do it, say no, you

(10:03):
can't make any deals. Otherwise. Take us back 100 years
when you didn't have 50% off the bloody arms
language. I know you're. I apologize, but I do, I do feel strongly about
this. Stop people like you whetting everything.
I'd love to take responsibility for mobilizing 22 million people
into the high street, but I can't on my own. But it was about, should

(10:26):
we make people work on Boxing Day? And it was a whole debate, there
was a big petition and as a result of that, actually quite a lot of
retailers are choosing to close on Boxing Day. The premise is
to give teams a proper break. Others choose to stay open. Now,
Boxing Day going out to the shops was actually a bit of a family day
out. And perhaps it's a break from eating too much and arguing over

(10:47):
Monopoly. But the truth is, some staff want to
work somewhere. I read that 60% of retail staff like
to choose their festive shifts and other prefer guaranteed
time off. Typically, what happens in retail is you either work
Christmas or New Year, but there's not one size fits
all. And there are people who've got maybe no family or friends

(11:09):
locally and they might prefer to work all the shifts. The
camaraderie of being with their colleagues beats a solo dinner of beans on toast
and reruns of Christmas classics, after all. And I think
culture's everything as long as teams feel that
they've been treated fairly. Those who want to work can throw their cap in the
ring at the beginning. Those who say, I'd rather have time off can,

(11:31):
you know, negotiate it. And if you make sure you look after
these people in the run up to Christmas and in maybe the sales season
afterwards, you'll get better service, better energy and better loyalty.
Because nothing's going to kill festive spirit and customer
experience faster than a bunch of resentful staff
on the shop floor who really, really don't want to be there.

(11:56):
So I guess my retail reckoning for
you this Christmas. Christmas is customers need to
have honesty and reassurance in order to spend, so
that price promise could be a winner. Cash and gift
cards are the safe options. Experience
is where, you know, the emotional connection with a brand

(12:19):
marries with the value perception. So
that's when people really feel special and, as
always, staff how they're treated. The culture
is the secret certainty of loyalty.
So which of those are you going to do this festive season? I'm
Claire Bailey, the retail champion and this has been retail reckoning. Yeah,

(12:41):
retail reckoning. Retail
reckoning. No space for dusty
shelves. Cause retail reckoning
owns the
floor.