Fifty six per cent of US consumers surveyed during the first week of November had already started their holiday shopping and nearly a quarter of purchases have already been made, according to the annual survey released recently by the National Retail Federation (NRF) and Prosper Insights & Analytics. This figure is about the same as in the past few years.
This is evidence that the holiday season has extended far beyond the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas, NRF president Matthew Shay said.Fifty six per cent of US consumers surveyed during the first week of November had already started their holiday shopping and nearly a quarter of purchases have already been made, according to the annual survey released recently by the National Retail Federation (NRF) and Prosper Insights & Analytics. This figure is about the same as in the past few years.#
That was up from 48 per cent who had already started at the same point a decade ago. On average, consumers had completed 24 per cent of their shopping, the highest level in the history of the survey and up from 16 per cent in 2009. Only 4 per cent had finished shopping.
Those numbers are even higher than an earlier NRF survey that found 39 per cent of holiday shoppers planned to start before November this year, saying they wanted to spread out their budgets and avoid both crowds and last-minute stress. Another 43 per cent planned to start in November, and only 18 per cent said they would wait until December.
NRF defines the holiday season as November 1 through December 31 and has forecast that sales will total between $727.9 and $730.7 billion. Consumers expect to spend an average $1,047.83–including purchases made earlier–for an increase of 4 per cent over last year, according to NRF’s annual survey released in October.
Even with many consumers shopping earlier, NRF estimates that 165.3 million people will shop in stores and online from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday, drawn by good deals, tradition and the social aspects of spending time with friends and family.
Similar to recent years, clothing and accessories are the top gift category this year, purchased by 58 per cent of those surveyed, followed by gift cards (54 per cent), toys (39 per cent), books/music/movies/video games (37 per cent) and food/candy (32 per cent).
The survey of 7,917 adult consumers was conducted October 31 through November 6.
Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DS)
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