Emmet Oliver

So you've looked at what type of spending, where they're going to do it.

But from what you're hearing, companies remain very concerned, particularly among small and medium-sized enterprises, that this is really going to hit their bottom line dramatically once it kicks off.

You know, what's the pattern versus previous years?

And it seems the overall shape of this is we still love Black Friday.

We still love Cyber Monday.

We love all these big package retail events, but just the spending starting to slightly taper off in some areas.

So do you get a sense that people will have a look, they'll go online, they'll go into the physical store, but they may just not spend anything.

They'll have a peek, but depending on what's there and available.

Now, obviously, when you make a purchase, there's all sorts of trade-offs going on.

And one is the cost versus other concerns, sometimes sustainability and so on.

It seems to be a subtle message in the survey results is that people are still looking at sustainability, but not quite as much.

Yeah, what's coming across in your survey is that people are going to go to their pay packets next year and go...

They may be just looking at price more so.

what is this?

And I know, to be fair to the department, they have done marketing, they have got a big communications campaign rolling out there.

I don't know much about the overall shape of it, but what comes through in your survey is that just the visibility of this still remains too low.

There's too many people who just don't know about it.

Now, it's a difficult thing to track in your survey, of course, but still the figures are very interesting.

On average, Irish consumers plan to spend at least 283 euros over the sales weekend compared to 329 last year.

That's 14% drop.