What Can Brands and Advertisers Expect from Consumers This Holiday Season?
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For most U.S. consumers, holiday shopping is well under way, having nabbed deals in Black Friday sales and Cyber Monday. And frankly, it’s not just consumers who are conditioned to this annual retail frenzy—the economy and retailers alike bet big on this special time of the year. In fact, Adobe estimates that the 2022 holiday shopping period alone will account for over $210 billion in revenue.
But with the combination of inflation denting consumer confidence, supply chain woes, and ongoing economic uncertainty, what can brands and advertisers expect from consumers this holiday season and which channels are their best bets?
Ecommerce over brick-and-mortar—or both?
It’s no secret that the pandemic catapulted e-commerce and digital experiences to the top of consumer shopping preferences (or needs) in 2020. And that trend continued in 2021, with nearly 80% of American consumers shopping online.
But despite physical stores fully reopening in 2022, bringing back a sense of normalcy to our everyday lives, consumers aren’t so much feeling the urge to completely return to brick-and-mortar as they are becoming more partial to multichannel experiences. That’s not to say that e-commerce is waning—quite the contrary, as online sales have already accounted for $180 billion this holiday season.
Mobile commerce continues to surge
Mobile shopping in the U.S. increased 41.4% in 2020, and then another 15% in 2021 to reach a staggering $359 billion, thanks largely to the pandemic and further accelerated through widespread adoption by Gen Z, Millennials, and Gen X.
And this trend isn’t likely to slow down—eMarketer predicts that mobile will account for 44% of all retail ecommerce sales by 2025. In fact, mobile devices account for $80 billion of online sales the last two months alone—and with the holiday season not yet over, that figure will very likely continue to grow.
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The rise of social commerce
As mobile devices dominate browsing behaviors and screen time, the ability to purchase directly through social channels is increasingly becoming mainstream. The last several months have seen nothing short of a social commerce arms race among the likes of TikTok, YouTube, and Snapchat—even ecommerce players like Shopify are entering the fray.
For good reason, too, as some 58% of Gen Z and Millennials say they plan to use social media to make purchases this holiday.
Direct-to-consumer
Lurking behind all of this is the push for brands to become more focused on a direct-to-consumer approach, thanks to the pressure of Google’s looming deprecation of third-party cookies and the need for brands to bolster their zero- and first-party data strategies in the long term.
Much of this is playing out in the retail media network frenzy and the increasing attractiveness of connected TV. However, what’s becoming more and more clear among retailers, consumer packaged goods brands, and other industries alike is that customer data, combined with the ability to meet consumers where they are, is becoming a fundamental part of the increasingly fragmented shopping experience this holiday season.?
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