Holiday Shopping Statistics And Trends

Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas… All these days mean shopping, sales, discounts, spending money apart from the underlying meaning. Together with the internet, shopping begin happening everywhere; not only in stores, but also on the web. Therefore, it gains importance to get insights about consumers’ behaviors and attitudes on the web.

Online Shopping by Device

According to assumptions, online sales will surpass store sales. While 28% of consumers (4% decrease according to last year) said they prefer shopping from the stores mainly, 55% of holiday shoppers said they spend shopping budget online. It is really a huge number.
If we look at the mobile shopping behaviors, it grew 32% last holiday season in US. This year’s predictions say third of the shoppers will order from the mobile device. Together with in-store and online shopping behaviors, there is a new trend called “voice search”. Voice-activated assistant leads to not only show a shopping list, but also order anything just with a voice command.

Holiday Shopping Survey For European Countries

There is a survey conducted by Deloitte. The survey of 8,154 consumers from 10 European countries and aged between 18-65 years old were asked several questions. According to the results;

• UK shoppers intend to spend an average of €614 this Christmas which is higher than European average €445. And also it is 1.8% more than last year. The top three spending markets are;
• The majority of spendings will be dedicated to gifts. It is followed by food and drink, socialising and travel. In UK, adults prefer to receive chocolate, books and perfume; teenagers wait money, computer games, books, chocolates and clothes/shoes as a gift.
• November is the key month for Christmas shopping. 50% of shoppers plan do their Christmas shopping before December.
• The most active online is UK among other European countries. They are planning to spend 142% more on gifts and 207% more on food and drink online than the European average.

Holiday Shopping Survey For US

Let’s look at the US!

• In the US, it is expected to 16.6% increase in online sales compared to last year. The average consumer is expected to spend $1,226 during the holiday shopping period.
• The majority of spendings will be dedicated to clothing and accessories (25%). It is followed by toys and hobbies (18%), electronics and accessories (16%) and health and beauty (12%).
• Survey respondents plan to spend 51% of their budget online. The more earnings they have, the more percentage of their budget they spend online. 
• Also 22% of survey respondents are using smartphones for holiday shopping.
• 44% of survey respondents said they will wait for holiday sales to buy bigger items.

• 80% of consumers plan to do the shopping in late November. It is the second period that has the highest shopping ratio behind Thanksgiving day (35.5%) and ahead of third period Black Friday (19.3%).

Final Thoughts

This shopping period officially started with Black Friday and leads up to the slew of December holidays. Creativity and channel distribution that meet consumers demands are necessary to win. There are lots of strategies you can apply. Some of them;

• Prepare for the holidays early
• Not sell only product, but sell also your brand
• Engage directly with people
• Build a customer segmentation strategy
• Launch a holiday channel strategy
• Be sure to have attractive deals
• Increase the frequency of email marketing
• Double down retargeting
• Focus on what you do best
• Never forget to pay extra extra attention to mobile

We think you don’t want to miss seasonal promotional opportunities especially while your competitors are getting benefit from this.