Reselling Christmas presents doesn’t seem so embarrassing. In 2021, “one in three French people had been disappointed by at least one of his gifts,” recalls the latest Rakuten market barometer with Ipsos. But this year, one in two Frenchmen would consider it, that is, 8 points more in a year, according to the same barometer published on December 15.
3 million resale listings
This Sunday, December 25 at 3:00 p.m., Rakuten also confirmed the registration of 650,000 new ads on its platform since the beginning of the morning, 8% more than in 2021 at the same time.
“Perhaps in another taboo time, the resale of gifts is now quite ingrained in the habits of the French” who “think about the planet trying to have a more reasoned way of consumption and their wallet” seeking “to preserve their purchasing power”, Flora Louvet , communications manager for Rakuten France, told AFP.
“We are really in a very purchasing power aspect. It is a real budget boost for both the reseller and the buyer,” the spokesperson underlines.
According to her, the discount reaches around 15% for a very recent product in new condition and the discount can reach up to 70% for a more common and less recent product.
Inflation pushes the resale of gifts
Another barometer confirms this trend: that of eBay with Kantar. This provides for the publication in France of 3 million advertisements for the resale of gifts between December 25 and January 3, 2023.
On eBay France, around 12 pm, around 100,000 new listings were posted. But according to the online platform, there is no special jump in resales this year: after an explosion in online sales in 2020 and 2021, years marked by the Covid-19 pandemic, “we are returning to normal trends” and ” quite faithful to the forecasts”. Louise Benzrihem, project manager for eBay France, told AFP.
Books, video games and mobiles are the star gifts for resale, along with perfumes, Lego and Playmobil, according to these two players in the sector.
Obviously, if some people start to resell their gifts, it’s often because they already have the duplicate product at home. In the same way, a garment of the wrong size will be useless in a closet.
However, if the phenomenon of resale observed at Christmas grows every year, it is also linked to the context. On the one hand, it seems that more and more consumers are turning to the second-hand market to participate in the circular economy. And on the other hand, with inflation, this resale of precious gifts can constitute a significant additional income.
Source: BFM TV
