Dive Brief:
- Nearly 60% of consumers said they plan to cut back on their everyday purchases to prioritize their holiday gifting budget, according to a Coveo survey of 4,000 U.K. and U.S. adults. Seventy-six percent said they are planning to spend the same amount or more this holiday season on their gift purchases.
- Sixty-eight percent of shoppers said they anticipate visiting one or more retailers during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the survey found.
- Eighty percent of respondents said they plan to look for discounts via email, social media, online searches and online marketplaces. Most survey respondents (85%) said they were likely to make impulse purchases online, particularly for shoes and clothing, per the report.
Dive Insight:
While pricing matters a great deal to budget-conscious consumers, it’s not the only factor they are considering when making holiday purchases. Ideally, shoppers want reasonable prices for quality merchandise, experts told Retail Dive. According to Coveo’s survey, 29% of shoppers highlighted “value/cost/budget” as their biggest concern during the holiday shopping season, followed by buying the right gifts (14%), on-time deliveries (11%) and product quality (9%).
Retailers can persuade customers to add more to their online orders, according to the report. Among the factors that would encourage consumers to buy more items are meeting the minimum order amount to get free shipping (62%), relevant offers popping up (48%) and recommendations for other items (26%), the survey found.
“Shopper enthusiasm and receptivity to persuasion are clear standouts in our annual holiday report findings, signaling that retailers have a major opportunity to capture a greater share of consumer spending during the upcoming shopping peak,” Lisa Grayston, general manager of commerce at Coveo, said in a statement. “Consumers are going into the holiday shopping season ready to be inspired, which opens doors for retailers to lean on their technological prowess to convince and convert.”
Signaling a slowdown in holiday sales growth, Deloitte predicted that this year’s holiday retail sales would grow between 2.3% and 3.3% year over year, down from last year’s holiday projection of between 3.5% and 4.6%. Meanwhile, a third of respondents to a recent Bankrate survey said they plan to reduce their holiday shopping this year compared to last year due to high interest rates and inflation.
