The 2020 holiday shopping season could become a bit of a mess, with consumers unsure whether they want to return to stores as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Companies are conducting surveys and crunching data in an attempt to predict what the shopping season will look like.
Fluent President and co-founder Matt Conlin forecasts that only 38% of consumers plan to shop in stores on Thanksgiving Day, whereas 85% of U.S. consumers typically shop in stores and 48% shop online. It's not difficult to figure out that more consumers are avoiding large crowds to keep their families safe, so they will be heading to the computer rather than the mall after Thanksgiving dinner.
Crunching the numbers, Fluent expects to see a 73% increase in those who shop exclusively online, with 58% of U.S. consumers supporting companies like Target and Walmart’s decision to close their doors on Thanksgiving Thursday.
Thanksgiving Day closures have the greatest impact on GenZers, with 48% saying it will have the most impact on their shopping plans, according to Fluent, which conducted the polling through daily online surveys collected across their owned and operated websites.
For this report, data was collected from a total of 6,812 respondents. The respondents consist of adults ages 18 and over located in the U.S.
More than 50% of consumers are shopping more with grocery brands, followed by fashion, beauty and cosmetics. One in two consumers currently do more than 75% of all their shopping online, and one in four consumers buy more than 90% of what they need online.
The Qubit survey also gauged consumer attitudes toward the upcoming holiday shopping season and whether respondents' shopping behavior and spending will change in the future compared to years past.
The data found 35.1% of shoppers said they will shop online more than they did before the pandemic, but just 10.6% of shoppers said they will do less shopping online than they did prior to the pandemic.
Some 44% of respondents plan to shop more online during this year’s Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas holidays compared to last year’s holiday season
About 30% of consumers still feel comfortable returning to stores, with 36.1% saying they plan to return in two months and 18.9% of consumers returning in 2021, according to Qubit.