Golden quarter week one: Get closer to shoppers this Christmas

IGD will be pulling together insight content across the next twelve weeks to help food and consumer goods companies navigate, review and understand shopper behaviour, industry trends and market performance during the golden quarter.

What happened last Christmas?

Christmas 2024 brought record level spending, driven not by volume but by inflation and a shift towards premium private label. In fact, shoppers claimed to have spent less on food and groceries than in 2023, likely reflecting smaller basket sizes despite rising prices. Indeed shoppers opted for more frequent but smaller trips, and many used loyalty points they had saved up during the year. That said, higher affluence shoppers were happy to trade up to premium products and embrace festive splurges.

So, what can we expect this Christmas? Will shoppers continue to keep a close eye on their budgets, or will we see more trading up and festive indulgence? We will be running pre and post Christmas research over the coming months, so if you’ve got any hypotheses you’d like us to test, the shopper team would love to hear from you. Get in touch!

How IGD can help you uncover shopper behaviour at this crucial time of year

The Christmas season is a critical time for both retailers and manufacturers - a period when shopper behaviour and decision-making shifts, and every shelf, display and promotion counts. To truly capitalise on this peak period, it’s not enough to rely on sales data alone. You need to understand why shoppers behave the way they do - what captures their attention, what drives their choices, and how they really experience your category in-store.

At IGD, we spend time where it matters most: in-store, observing real behaviour and speaking directly with shoppers at the point of purchase. This approach gives us, and you, a unique perspective on how people shop during the festive season.

In this article, we’ll explore how our in-store research can help you uncover deeper insights into shopper needs, test the impact of your activations, and build stronger, insight-led strategies for the Christmas period and beyond.

Why Christmas shopper insight matters

Understanding what interrupts shoppers in-store, what influences their decisions, which displays they engage with and ultimately lead to conversion, and how they perceive your brand during this time is key to:

Understand how impactful in-store activations are within your category

Hear what shoppers are saying about your brand - in their own words

See how your products feature in festive occasions and aisles

Get ahead with seasonal planning for 2026

How we can help: in-the-moment insights

We are a team of shopper experts, and we work with you to tailor the research questions that will give you the insights you need. In this Christmas research, we will use two methods:

Observations: to uncover real, in-the-moment behaviour - not just what shoppers say they do, but what they actually do. Observations provide valuable context around how shoppers navigate the store, engage with your products, and make decisions.

Intercepts: capture instant feedback at the point of purchase. We engage with shoppers directly in-store to understand motivations, purchase drivers and barriers, which give you rich insight straight from your shopper.

This approach allows you to receive fast feedback and tailor to the retailers of interest. We can capture rich insights in just one afternoon across one retailer, or to cover multiple retailers we can spend a day or more in store.

Looking to Test Your Activations?

Observations and intercepts will get to the heart of how shoppers respond to activations in store and give you real depth of insight at retailer level. The ShopperVista team also run light touch quantitative evaluations of a limited number of in store or online activations throughout the year, including Christmas. If you want to find out what shoppers recall about your in-store Christmas displays or what they like and dislike about each activation, reach out to your account manager or the ShopperVista team.