After a gloomy Christmas, high street retailers are pessimistic. Debt-laden customers face the reality that years of carefree spending, fuelled by record levels of cheap credit, may be coming to an end. But in a typically British fashion, rather than going for the burn of not shopping, we’ve been exploring how resourcefully we can continue to get the shopping buzz without the hefty bill, and while high street shops took a hit over Christmas and the New year, two sectors made big gains: the charity sector enjoyed sales growth of 5% in the run-up to Christmas and home shopping took off in a big way.

This year 4.4 million people turned their backs on the festivities on Christmas Day itself, preferring to shop online for TVs, mobile phones and washing machines, with virtual tills ringing up £84m - a staggering 270% increase on 2006. Men, right across the world, fuelled a large part of the post-Christmas sales online too, both shopping for electrical goods and, interestingly, buying new clothes – were they fed up with being taunted about their lack of sex appeal over Christmas, I wonder? It seems that men use down-time, Bank Holiday weekends, Public Holidays etc to hoover up clothing bargains and one reason for this may be that they can sit down with their wife or girlfriend, and a laptop, and buy online with expert advice alongside them, but without the hassle of wandering the high street with shopping bags, or the humiliation of being seen by their mates out shopping.

Internet shopping by Pandemia

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