How to get best shopping deals for Christmas

Savvy shopper Alice Zhao has a Christmas wish list so she is ready to pounce when a good deal comes along.

The Sydney mother of two young boys aged under five has been using ShopBack to get cash back on her spending for the past six months, mostly for retail goods and travel.

She told NCA NewsWire that in the past six months alone she had collected about $2000 cash back, mostly from travel where she made her biggest purchases.

“I’ve booked twice with Booking.com and I had cash back from them, which was probably the biggest cash back ... it’s actually a good bonus,” she said.

Ms Zhao also plans to make the most of the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales for her Christmas gift list.

“Black Friday is coming up next week, so I’m hoping that that will be good to have a bit of cash back on top of the sales,” she said.

“I think definitely preparing a wish list beforehand helps because some brands only do flash sales for a couple of hours, so it’s just handy to have the wish list so you can just add things in your shopping cart.

“I think it’s just a good way of getting a bit of cash back because obviously there are things that you need to buy anyway, so you might as well just make the most of it.”

It comes as new research from Westpac found Christmas would be a much smaller affair this year, with almost three quarters (72 per cent) of people planning to cut back on their Christmas spending.

The research – which involved a survey of more than 2000 adults – also found 74 per cent of people said they would be actively seeking bargains and looking for coupons, deals and cash back offers to help stretch their spending further.

Westpac is integrating cash back offers from ShopBack into its app.

Managing director of consumer finance Steve Rubenstein said shoppers were becoming savvier with their spending by purchasing gifts throughout the year, as well as hunting for deals, rewards and loyalty programs.

“We know that on average, Australians are planning to spend $836 in total this Christmas, with millennials intending to spend the most at $948,” he said.

“We estimate, on average, our customers could get $86 in cash back when purchasing through ShopBack over the festive period – making their Christmas budget go even further.”

ShopBack is the largest cash back and rewards platform in the Asia-Pacific, with more than 4000 brands.