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How the timeline is shifting and consumers are shopping
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The holiday season is no longer confined to just November and December. As Amazon and other retailers hold October sales events, enticing consumers to start their holiday shopping early with deep discounts, the traditional holiday season is expanding.
In addition to deal-seeking, the holiday season is marked by consumers’ omnichannel preferences as they shift between shopping online, on their phones, and in-store. Flexible payment options like buy now, pay later (BNPL) are also playing a larger role in the holiday season as consumers look for alternative ways to pay.
In this guide, we explore how the holiday season is changing and what retailers need to know about consumer shopping habits. We also recap the 2023 holiday season and give a sneak preview of what 2024’s holiday sales will look like.
Historically, the holiday season has referred to November and December, the last two months of the year which contain the Cyber Five (i.e., the five-day period between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday), Christmas, and New Year’s Eve.
But in 2022, in addition to its usual event in July, Amazon introduced a second Prime Day event in October. The two-day Prime Early Access Sale prompted many holiday shoppers to start early, lengthening the holiday shopping season.
These October sales events have begun to serve as an unofficial kickoff to the holiday season, both making it longer and potentially stealing share from the Cyber Five.
Just like the rest of the year, consumers switch seamlessly between shopping online, on their phone, and in-store at major retailers and department stores, meaning retailers must be sure the customer experience is consistent across all channels.
However, there is some variance in shopping preferences among generations.
To help pay for holiday purchases, many consumers turned to BNPL services during the 2023 holiday season.
Though returns are a year-round challenge for retailers (EMARKETER forecasts total retail return value in the US will grow 2.0% in 2024 to reach $931.85 billion), they can be especially overwhelming following a busy holiday season due to increased sales and, therefore, returns.
Retailers are experimenting with a variety of strategies to keep return volumes down.
But retailers need to be careful when implementing return policies. If they become too costly or inconvenient, it could hurt the bottom line.
Despite consumers’ continued price sensitivity, US holiday sales rose 3.9% to reach $1.309 trillion in 2023, per EMARKETER’s February 2024 forecast.
As holiday retail sales trends normalized to pre-pandemic levels, ecommerce led sales growth, increasing 8.8% to reach $248.02 billion, per EMARKETER. (This is slightly higher than the $222.1 billion in online spend that Adobe Analytics reported, a 4.9% increase YoY.) However, even though non-ecommerce sales grew just 2.8%, they made up 81.1% of total US holiday retail sales.
Deep discounts drove consumer spending across the Cyber Five in 2023, resulting in $40.10 billion online sales, per EMARKETER’s June 2023 forecast.
Amazon emerged the big retail winner of the season as consumers sought out the best deals and fastest shipping times online.
We expect 2024 holiday sales to follow a similar pattern as 2023.
Deal-seeking will remain a high priority for consumers who are dealing with inflation, layoffs (though the unemployment rate is 3.7 as of February 2024), declining savings rates, and challenging economic factors affecting consumer confidence. This means that retailers will need to be ready to discount throughout the season, using social and mobile channels to reach consumers wherever they are.
This story has been updated from a previous version.
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