Socially Distant Santa? Here’s Your Holiday Shopping 2020 Preview

Consumers avoiding brick and mortar stores. Apprehensions about the state of the economy. The looming uncertainty of a second wave of the pandemic.

That doesn’t sound good for holiday shopping, right?

Well, not so fast. We’re starting to see a sense of cautious optimism creep back into consumers’ wallets. Consumers worried about the economy to a large extent dropped 17.4 percentage points from March to September and 6.4 of those percentage points were just between August and September.

Additionally, 62% of consumers say their spending has remained the same despite the pandemic, while 4% say it has actually increased.

This could be good news for a holiday shopping season that many retailers are hoping will save their 2020 numbers. So, how do you connect with shoppers looking to ring in the season with retail?

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like…Online Black Friday Shopping

In their annual holiday retail forecast, Deloitte is reporting that holiday retail sales could increase between 1% and 1.5%, with e-commerce sales growing 25% to 35% year-over-year (context: that could be up to $196 billion total in e-commerce sales).

We looked at Black Friday and Cyber Monday shoppers to determine that drivers and purchasing behaviors that should inform your strategy and messaging this holiday season. This group is 52% female, 25% are between 25 and 44 years of age, they’re 10% more likely to be employed full-time than the average U.S. consumer and 21% have a household income between $50-$75K.

These shoppers are 29% more likely to rely on delivery service instead of in-person shopping in the next 90 days.

59% are avoiding physical stores to a moderate extent, while 35% are avoiding physical stores to a large extent. However, one of their top values is obeying laws and fulfilling obligations, which means they’ll likely follow your in-store COVID precautions – and, as our data tells us, they will expect you to have those in place. To feel comfortable going in-store, these shoppers are likely to expect curbside pick-up, contactless payment, nightly disinfecting, both customers and staff wearing masks, reduced occupancy and forced social distancing.

To put these Black Friday and Cyber Monday shoppers’ minds at ease with coming back in-store, your holiday retail plan needs to include putting these precautions into place –– and implementing curbside pickup and/or delivery.

Which retailers potentially stand to gain the most with these shoppers? They’re department store shoppers: 24% more likely to shop at Sears, 12% more likely to shop at Macy’s and 8% more likely to shop at JCPenney. The brands they gravitate towards include Lands’ End, DKNY, Timberland and Ralph Lauren.

And, if you’re looking to connect with these shoppers via holiday advertising, you’ll find them on YouTubeTV, TikTok and reading Real Simple. Additionally, it may not be a bad idea to throw in some organizing products this season –– this group is 60% more likely to watch Tidying Up with Marie Kondo.

39% Will Deck the Halls with Extended Family and Friends

Lastly, we’ll leave you on a note of coming home for the holidays (and a hint of a blog post to come). We asked consumers…

Which of the following statements most closely describes the people with whom you anticipate celebrating the upcoming holidays during the remainder of this year (e.g., Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa)?