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Hello and welcome to a bustling Christmas market in the heart of Toronto,

and today's Business Daily on the BBC World Service.

I'm Megan Lawton, and with just a few days until December 25th,

we're looking at how Christmas spending is changing.

A lot of people are kind of like trying to make mortgage payments, but then also trying to

like spend and keep the tradition going, so it's kind of hard to manage both.

I do think people are buying, they're looking for better quality and better value rather

than just buying, you know, a hundred things.

Recent data suggests consumers here in Canada are planning to cut back on festive spending

this year, and it's a similar picture over the border in the U.S.

It's just a generally unstable condition where I think consumers are afraid of overspending

for fear that they may need that cash in the new year.

Today, we'll look at where we're still spending our money

and hear how some are using artificial intelligence to help with their shopping.

In today's market condition, you want to buy something that's packing a bit more punch for the money that you're spending.

That's all coming up on today's business daily.

It's minus two degrees in Toronto today, but that hasn't stopped hundreds of people coming

down to the winter village in the city's distillery district.

Once a working distillery, there are cobbled streets, tall Victorian red brick

buildings all centred around a piazza. In the centre, there's a huge glittering Christmas tree,

decked out in lavish giant baubles, and then some creative-looking reindeer made out of beer barrels

...