A truncated holiday spending period with fewer days between Thanksgiving and Christmas and the election will throw a curveball to retail sales this season, our analyst Sky Canaves said on an episode of the “Behind the Numbers: Reimagining Retail” podcast. In-store retail will see healthy growth, consumers will continue holding back on splurges, and mobile will uplift overall ecommerce. Here are three trends we’re predicting for the upcoming holiday season.
Article
| Sep 6, 2024
“The holiday season really starts October 1,” Megan Gaffey, senior director of publisher partnerships at Rakuten Advertising, said on our Tech-Talk webinar Performance Marketing Playbook for Q4 Holiday Success. “And you see a lot of advertisers launch Black Friday promotions the Tuesday before Thanksgiving to get ahead of the noise.”
Article
| Sep 16, 2024
Forecasts
| Jul 16, 2024
Source: EMARKETER Forecast
Forecasts
| Jul 1, 2024
Source: EMARKETER Forecast
27% of UK and US adults plan to start buying holiday gifts as early as October, according to an April 2024 survey from Salsify.
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| Jul 16, 2024
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| Jun 19, 2024
Source: CivicScience
Our expectations dovetail with Bain’s forecast, which expects overall retail sales from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday to grow about 5% to reach $75 billion for the first time. Putting the Cyber Five in context: This holiday retail season is longer than ever, with online holiday shopping activity spread across the calendar.
Article
| Oct 4, 2024
A later Thanksgiving leaves fewer shopping days before Christmas. The fourth Thursday of November falls on the latest possible date in 2024, November 28, meaning a shorter window for shopping—and marketing—between Cyber Monday and Christmas. Optimized planning for inventory and fulfillment will be critical.
Report
| Aug 20, 2024
There’s also a later-than-usual Thanksgiving, which means Cyber Monday falls in December. Go further: Read our US Holiday Shopping 2024 report.
Article
| Sep 19, 2024
Key stat: Half (50%) of US holiday shoppers will start shopping before Thanksgiving this year, up six percentage points from 2023, according to June 2024 data from CivicScience. What this means for marketers: Early shopping means early advertising. Plan to spread holiday budgets out over a longer period of time.
Article
| Aug 23, 2024
The emergence of Black Fall: Traditionally synonymous with post-Thanksgiving sales, Black Friday is expanding into a season unto itself—Black Fall. Advertisers are now starting their promotions weeks and even months in advance of Thanksgiving to reach customers looking for the best deals.
Article
| Aug 22, 2024
Pulling the holiday season earlier: This holiday season will be unique given the combination of a presidential election and a shorter-than-normal period between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The presidential election in particular creates uncertainty, which is why retailers aim to pull the holiday season into October before consumers’ focus shifts to the polls.
Article
| Sep 17, 2024
So we see the initial wave of holiday shopping that starts in October, and then we can expect a lull until after the election, and things will really ramp up around the cyber week and Thanksgiving.
Audio
| Sep 4, 2024
Early birds that shop before Thanksgiving are more likely to shop online (72%) than those who shop after the turkey is carved (63%), the report found. Santa will bring new fits. Clothing/apparel (64%) and gift cards (62%) will be the top product categories for holiday 2024, up 4% and 3% , respectively, per LG. Toys, books, video games and media was the third biggest gift category (54%), down 2% YoY.
Article
| Aug 6, 2024
On today's podcast episode, in our "Retail Me This, Retail Me That" segment, we discuss how the Thanksgiving numbers look, why folks are online shopping more this season, and where the ecommerce ceiling is. Then for "Red-Hot Retail," our analysts give us four spicy predictions about the remaining few weeks of holiday shopping. Join our analyst Sara Lebow as she hosts director of Briefings Jeremy Goldman and analyst Zak Stambor.
Audio
| Dec 6, 2023
Steep discounts drove record Black Friday online sales: Ecommerce sales surged on the day after Thanksgiving, while brick-and-mortar sales grew just 1.1% YoY.
Article
| Nov 25, 2023
Thanksgiving food costs are expected to soar 13.5% this year: Walmart, Aldi, and Lidl aim to use discounts on turkey, stuffing mix, and other holiday ingredients to attract new customers.
Article
| Nov 4, 2022
It’s official. The Cyber Five (the five-day period between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday) have not lost their touch. Let’s dig into the data as retailers take a deep breath and ready themselves for what’s shaping up to be a pretty busy holiday season.
Article
| Dec 1, 2022
A surprisingly strong start to the Cyber Five: Steep discounts drove record sales on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, as US consumers flocked to stores as well as ecommerce sites and apps over the holiday weekend.
Article
| Nov 26, 2022
Now that the dust has settled from this year’s record-breaking Cyber Five (the five days between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday), it’s time to see how the industry’s advertising efforts shook out, according to new research from Tinuiti.
Article
| Dec 2, 2022
On today's very special holiday episode, host Sara Lebow tees up a conversation between our principal analyst Andrew Lipsman and Dan Hess, global chief product officer of The NPD Group, to unearth the long-lost history of Cyber Monday. Before it became an industrywide phenomenon in 2005, Dan and his team at Comscore were among the first to "discover" the spike in online shopping that happened the Monday after Thanksgiving—as far back as 2002. Find out what caused this phenomenon to take place, why there was so much misinformation about Cyber Monday in the early days, and what the day was originally called.
Audio
| Nov 15, 2022
In 2002, Comscore noticed a spike in online sales the Monday after Thanksgiving, a phenomenon we now know as Cyber Monday. Our analyst Andrew Lipsman and Dan Hess, formerly of Comscore and now at The NPD Group, share four facts about the retail holiday.
Article
| Nov 23, 2022
Black Friday will be No. 2 at $10.40 billion, followed by Thanksgiving at $5.96 billion. The Cyber Five period maintains the highest concentration of online sales, so marketers still need to keep some spending in reserve.
Report
| Oct 17, 2023
Chart
| Nov 28, 2023
Source: National Retail Federation (NRF); Prosper Insights & Analytics
Ecommerce growth accelerated during the 2023 holiday season as US consumers shifted more of their shopping to mobile devices.
Report
| Mar 22, 2024