• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, November 14, 2016

According to a new report from the NRF, holiday season retail sales are expected to increase 3.6% to $656 billion in the United States this year. Furthermore, the NRF report expects online sales to grow between 7% and 10% to as much as $117 billion.

Given the critical importance of the holiday season to retailers, the Fluent Study surveyed 1,993 American consumers to get a better sense of how they will shop this holiday season and how they perceive holiday marketing efforts.

• A little over a quarter of Americans say they will spend less this holiday season: Though the Fluent report is expecting an overall uptick in holiday spending this year, that won’t hold true for all Americans, with 26% planning to spend less and over half (53%) looking to spend the same amount as last year
• Cyber Monday will be as big of a shopping event as Black Friday: 40% of Americans plan to shop online on Cyber Monday, while 39% will shop in stores on Black Friday
• The holiday shopping season keeps starting sooner: 34% of Americans started holiday shopping before September! Only 20% say they will first start their holiday shopping in December
• Americans want to see more religion in holiday marketing. 43% of Americans say holiday marketing has been watered down to take out religious symbols that they’d like to see, while just 17% of shoppers think there is too much emphasis on religion in holiday marketing
• It’s not just about TV anymore: 2016 will truly be the year of omni-channel holiday shopping, with consumers rating at least five advertising channels (direct mail, print ads, television, email, and online ads) as nearly equally important in determining where they shop and what they’ll buy this season
• Clicks beat bricks for holiday shopping research: 36% of shoppers said that they will do most of their product research via retail websites and another 18% said they will do most of their research using mobile apps, leaving only 47% who say they will do the majority of their research in stores.

For additional information about FluentCo, please visit here.

(http://www.fluentco.com/insight/whats-trending-whos-spending-holiday-shopping-2016/)