Retailers, Do You Know Consumer Holiday Shopping Habits Are Changing?

I don't know where you are in the world but from where I sit it's 90+ degrees with very high humidity nearly every day for the past X number of days. The last thing on my mind from a consumer perspective is holiday shopping. 

Of course that is not the case - at least it shouldn't be for retailers around the country and the world who by now are well into their holiday planning for the coming 2016 shopping season. Yes, visions of record-breaking sales dance in their collective heads. Sorry, had to get that in. 

Understanding the habits of holiday shoppers can go a long way in ensuring those visions coming to life which is why we asked that very question of holiday shoppers as part of our extensive research conducted in partnership with Edison Research.

In 2015, for the second straight year, research into the minds of holiday shoppers was done and as you will see via the qualitative aspect of the research - there was a quantitative aspect was well, holiday shopping habits are in fact changing.

As you can clearly see from the video how consumers shop is changing. However, we cannot discuss the changes in how we shop without mentioning Amazon Prime. 2015 was another big year for Amazon Prime, with 30% of Prime members saying they made most of their 2015 holiday purchases using the service, which is up dramatically from 20% in 2014. 

There was also significant growth in membership. Thirty-three percent of holiday shoppers indicated they were Prime members last year.

This year, that number climbed to 42%. However, shoppers indicated before the holidays that they had planned to shop even more—but didn’t actually follow through on that plan. In the pre-holiday study, 42% of Prime members planned to make “more than a few, but not most” of their purchases with Prime, and 29% said “a few.” However, the actual percentages in the post-holiday study were 27% for “more than a few, but not most,” and 35% for “a few.”

The Social Media Impact

One thing that is definitely growing as time goes on is the impact of social media on holiday shopping. It is worth noting here that the percentage of holiday shoppers who told us that they learn about sales from social media grew from 20% in 2014 to 23% in 2015.

One of the interesting angles we learned from the qualitative interviews was that the utility of social was not simply as another channel for brands to disseminate sales information. Instead, we heard from a number of respondents that they used social media to see what their friends were shopping for and buying—in other words, social was a vehicle for discovery, not just for sales/transactional information.

Tip of the Holiday Shopper Iceberg

So now you have some insights into the minds of holiday shoppers and their habits and the role social media plays. But there's more... a lot more when it comes to understanding holiday shoppers. 

That's why you need to download Making Spirits Bright Increase Holiday Results With Retail Shopping Research because regardless of where you are in your holiday planning, you can always use a little holiday cheer. Or something like that. 

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