German consumers do not fear a gift delivery disaster at Christmas

According to the survey, only one in ten consumers is currently "very worried" or "quite worried" that their Christmas presents will not be delivered on time this year. In contrast, 51 percent of respondents have little or no concern that the letter carrier will ring the doorbell with their online orders in time for Christmas Eve.

Majority of consumers in Germany store for Christmas gifts in December

Accordingly, German consumers are taking their time with their gift shopping on the web. As the parcelLab survey shows, only seven out of 100 respondents had already done all their Christmas shopping by Halloween. A further 16 percent want to have bought all their presents by Black Friday and Cyber Monday at the latest. By contrast, more than one in three consumers in Germany plan to do their Christmas shopping during the course of December. Two percent are also last-minute shoppers this year, who will only really start shopping on or after December 23.

When asked how consumers' shopping habits have changed since last year, the results show that 13 percent of consumers plan to shop "considerably" or "a little" more online than last year. One in three respondents is maintaining last year's shopping behavior. And as many as eight percent said they planned to hunt for gifts in online retail less frequently than in 2020.

Low willingness to pay for delivery guarantees in time for the festive season

Willingness to pay for a punctual delivery experience remains rather low. Only 12 percent of respondents signaled interest in paying higher delivery costs for a guaranteed delivery date. Eleven percent would pay a premium if they could then decide for themselves which delivery person rings their doorbell. And almost a third of consumers said they would prefer to wait longer for a parcel if they knew the exact delivery date and did not have to pay an extra surcharge.

"Every year, the Christmas season presents online retailers with special challenges when it comes to operations experience management," said parcelLab co-founder Anton Eder, commenting on the study results. "However, it seems that the fact that even in the exceptional year of 2020 the delivery of gifts went largely smoothly has further boosted consumer confidence in e-commerce. Retailers should not rest on their laurels, however, but use the opportunity to positively surprise potential new customers in the Christmas business with outstanding service even after they have clicked on the order button - and thus retain their loyalty in the long term."

About parcelLab

parcelLab is the world's leading platform for operations experience management. parcelLab's platform automatically transforms data generated at various points in the shipping process into personalized, branded messages, making parcel shipping a true customer experience. The company accompanies around three million shipments every day and sends out almost seven million proactive, personalized information messages in the process. The shipping data comes from more than 150 carriers worldwide, including DHL, FedEx and DPD.Honored with the 2019 Supply Chain Award, the scale-up was also named one of the fastest-growing technology companies in Europe in 2020 by the Financial Times.

parcelLab has offices in Munich, London, Paris and New York and transforms - among others for IKEA, Bose, Puma, Lidl and Nespresso - the contact from the order to the return into a sustainable positive buying experience.