Survey: Consumers to start holiday shopping early, focus on promotional events
New data shows that the majority of American consumers will have started their holiday shopping by Nov. 1.
According to a survey of 1,000 U.S. consumers from omnichannel shopping platform Skai, 58% of consumers will have begun holiday shopping by the time November rolls around, and 15% have already started their holiday shopping. Sixty percent of respondents said it is too early for retailers to start holiday promotions before October, while 20% said it's never too early to start holiday promotions.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Skai found that 80% of survey respondents said they are planning to budget carefully due to economic concerns, although 66% said they plan to spend about the same or more this holiday season than previous years. When it comes to how much they plan to spend, American consumers are virtually split, with 51% saying they don’t plan on exceeding $500 on gifts, compared to 49% who will spend more than $500.
[READ MORE: Survey: Inflation, cost of living to impact majority of holiday shopping plans]
Holiday promotional events will be a big part of shoppers’ spending plans, according to the survey. Nearly seven-in-10 (68%) shoppers plan to shop Amazon’s October Prime Day sale for holiday gifts, while 66% plan to spend up to half of their holiday budget between Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Other insights from Skai’s survey include the following:
- The top five holiday shopping categories are: fashion & apparel (90.7% plan to shop), toys & games (84.6%), hobbies & leisure (83.8%), beauty & personal care (81.8%) and books, music & media (78.5%).
- The top-five research methods for holiday gifts are, in order, retailer websites, search engines, browsing in physical stores, social media, and TV & streaming.
- Thirteen percent of shoppers now use AI tools like ChatGPT for holiday shopping inspiration, up from 5% last year.
