This holiday season? It might not be so merry for retailers, according to the 2020 U.S. Retail Holiday Survey Report from JLL. And the culprit, to no one’s surprise, is COVID-19.
JLL surveyed 1,089 U.S. consumers online in September and found that shoppers are cutting their holiday spending this year. According to the survey, the average consumer plans to spend $694 this year on holiday spending. That’s down 20.5 percent from the $873 on average consumers said they spent last year.
The survey found that consumers of all ages and income levels will spend less on average this year and that COVID worries will shift much holiday shopping from brick-and-mortar stores to online.
JLL found that the prime spending cohorts, those shoppers 30 to 44 years old, will cut their spending the most, reducing their holiday shopping spending by 31.5 percent.
High-income shoppers earning more than $200,000 a year will cut their spending the least, by just 3.9 percent. Shoppers earning from $50,000 to $100,000 will cut their spending by 26 percent.
Shoppers’ reliance on online shopping will remain during the holiday season, too, according to JLL. The survey says that the percentage of consumers who plan to shop at purely online retailers such as Amazon rose more than 16 percentage points year-over-year to 58.5 percent. Shoppers who plan to order online from physical retailers nearly doubled, climbing to 48.5 percent. The survey found, too, that nearly one-quarter of shoppers plan to use curbside pickup for their holiday shopping.
One thing that hasn’t changed from last year? The top three retailers at which consumers plan to do their holiday shoppping. This year, as they did last year, consumers chose Amazon, Walmart and Target as their top three holiday shopping destinations.
The percentage of consumers who chose Amazon as one of their top holiday retailers actually increased this year from 38.1 percent in 2019 to 53.6 percent in 2020. These figures rose from 36.2 percent to 47.2 percent for Walmart and from 29.6 percent to 39.4 percent for Target.
