Festive finance: Consumer spending this holiday season
Black Friday can bring huge discounts to shoppers hungry for a deal. How much of our audience is swayed by the savings?
As we head into the tail end of the year, retailers are ramping up their campaigns to prepare for the holiday spending spree. Though Black Friday is historically considered the kickoff of the spending season, our audiences are thinking about gifting and giving earlier and earlier in the autumn season. To urge consumers to open up their wallets sooner, retailers are offering ‘early’ Black Friday deals in anticipation of the biggest retail boom of the year.
We’ve polled our audiences, spanning interests in gaming, tech, hardware, movies, and more, to find out just who they’re shopping for, and how they’re shopping, this holiday season. We asked 1,000 members of our UK audience and 3,000 members of our USA audience how they’ll be shopping the Black Friday sales this year.
UK vs USA: When does the buying begin?
While in-store retail sales are more beholden to Black Friday, online shopping sales have been creeping up the calendar. Some major retailers have let the discounts loose as early as November 1st this year, often building to Black Friday as a bargain behemoth.
In our UK audience, it doesn’t seem consumers are too tempted by the early sales. Only 31% of our consumer audience are shopping before November, with 29% starting their holiday shopping once the November Black Friday sales ramp up. A whopping 39% of our audience saves their shopping for December, maybe holding out for the eleventh-hour deals offered at the end of the year.
In the USA, our audience is more receptive to earlier sales, with 49% of shoppers filling their carts before November even begins. 57% of our US audience confirmed they’ll be on the lookout for deals on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, compared to 52% of our UK audience. Within the UK, shoppers are more swayed by big markdowns, with 72% saying that markdowns have an influence on their purchases as opposed to just 52% of our US audience.
UK vs USA: How are consumers shopping?
Online shopping has made it easier than ever to shop the Black Friday sales without even stepping outside. Our audiences agree, with 64% of our UK audience saying they’ll be shopping online over in-store. 58% of our US audience says they’ll be shopping online as well, but 42% will still be hitting the sales IRL.
Another divide between our UK and USA audiences is budgeting. The majority of our UK audience says they’ll likely overspend when it comes to their holiday gift-buying budget, whereas in the US, 57% of shoppers will be sticking to their budget.
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