Dive Brief:
- Indicating a shift in consumer holiday shopping behavior, a JLL survey of 1,080 consumers found that 63.2% of consumers plan to do at least some of their shopping in stores this year, up from 58% last year. This is followed by 55.3% who plan to shop with an online-only retailer and 49.1% ordering online from a brick-and-mortar store.
- Among the reasons why customers want to shop in stores for the holidays are to view products before purchasing them (54.5%), enjoy the ambiance of the store (36.9%) and avoid shipping costs and delays (32.7%), the survey found.
- Respondents plan to shop the most online during Black Friday (54.2%) and Cyber Monday (54.3%). As for shopping in stores, nearly half of JLL survey respondents (45.7%) said they will look for deals throughout the entire holiday season, and 39.7% said they planned to shop in stores on Black Friday.
Dive Insight:
JLL’s report offers insight into which retailers could attract the most shoppers this holiday season. While Amazon topped the list of preferred retailers this year at 64.3%, that’s slightly down from 2021 when 65.6% of survey respondents said they would shop with the e-commerce giant. Walmart, Target and Kohl’s took up the follow-up 2022 spots at 47.9%, 38.8% and 9.8%, respectively.
The report also shows a stark divide in how many consumers plan to spend more this holiday season. Under half (43.8%) of survey respondents said they are significantly cutting back their holiday spending due to inflation. But upon further examination, about half (49.7%) of consumers earning less than $50,000 plan to make sizable cuts in their budget in response to inflation, but only 24% of consumers earning $150,000 said the same.
Other research suggests that consumers plan to spend online this year, but not as much as in previous years due to early holiday sales. An October Adobe report estimates that shoppers will spend $209.7 billion online between Nov. 1 and Dec. 31, up 2.5% from 2021. Patrick Brown, vice president of growth marketing and insights at Adobe, said in a statement that this year’s online shopping growth will be modest because consumers will spend during October sales retailers are offering.
JLL’s report is another sign that consumers are on the hunt for deals this holiday season and shopping earlier than usual. An Accenture report released this week found that 42% of the survey respondents plan to shop when retailers are offering markdowns, and 44% said they are buying their purchases earlier to get everything they need in time for the holidays.
In response to consumers’ desires to shop online and in stores, some retailers are changing their strategy to reach customers wherever they are. For Walmart’s “Black Friday Deals for Days” event this year, the retailer is offering its holiday discounts online every Monday in November.
Some retailers already see the shift back to in-store shopping. This week, a report from Placer.ai found that Target’s foot traffic rose 3.2% in the week of October 3–9. The retailer’s Deal Days event, which ran from Oct. 6-8, attracted nearly 28% more average daily visits from customers to Target locations than last year.
