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July 18, 2025
Will Holiday Shopping Spend Beat Last Year’s Numbers, Despite Tariff Concerns?
If you’re already crossing names and gifts off your shopping list, you’re probably not alone. The expansion of the holiday purchasing season means that more than one-third (34%) of those polled by Salsify in the production of its “2025 Holiday Pulse Report” have already begun buying presents for their nearest and dearest, although that does leave the bulk of the remainder (58%) waiting until peak season — spanning September through December — to whip out their cash or credit cards.
The biggest question on the table, however: Will holiday shopping spend outperform 2024’s numbers? Let’s look to the data for one take.
Salsify Suggests US Holiday Spend in 2025 Could Lead to a ‘Pretty, Pretty Good’ Year for Retailers
The authors of Salsify’s report, which polled 510 American shoppers and 500 from the U.K., suggested that holiday spending this year would stay steady (or steadily increase).
Overall, 18% of respondents said they would be curtailing their spend in 2025, 53% expected to dish about approximately the same amount as last year, and 22% indicated additional spending would take place this holiday season.
One caveat, however: U.K. shoppers were more likely (26%) than their U.S. counterparts (17%) to say they were looking at a higher holiday spending layout in 2025.
An age-related breakout indicated that Gen Zers and millennials were most likely to spend more this holiday season (29% and 25%, respectively), while Gen Xers (16%) and boomers (17%) were less inclined to increase spend versus year-prior levels.
Salsify was keen to point out, however, that in 2024, more shoppers (21%) said they planned to spend less than they had the year prior — a statistic 3% higher than this year’s cohort who said the same.
Data: Black Friday Remains a Sales Event Blockbuster, and Online Channels Are Likely To Dominate
Contrasting its last-year result which highlighted that 62% of shoppers were slated to engage with Black Friday sales, Salsify underscored new data which hinted that nearly three-quarters (or 73%) of respondents said as much this year — a substantial gain of 11%.
And while Black Friday historically acted as an in-store counterpart to Cyber Monday, the slow crawl towards online shopping appears to represent itself in the Salsify survey results. Among those polled, 38% plan to shop exclusively online for Black Friday, while 24% said they will be spending money both online and at brick-and-mortar stores. A mere 11% indicated that they would be shopping solely at physical stores, by contrast.
Excitement remained muted for Black Friday itself, however, with 30% stating “it still offers significant value,” while 43% stated that they observe deals, but don’t entirely rely on them. Nearly a quarter (23%) said that they didn’t even notice the deals put on display the year prior.
As an aside, 61% plan to shop Cyber Monday deals, with a generational gap in evidence: Zoomers (72%) and millennials (74%) weighed heavily in the affirmative, while boomers (35%) didn’t seem nearly as enthused.
Physical Retail Stores Represent a Vital Product Discovery Channel, However
Seemingly set in opposition to data suggesting that shoppers were disinterested in brick-and-mortar deals, those same locations topped the list when it came to the question of “Where do shoppers discover holiday gift ideas?”
The following list details the survey answers to that question: Physical retail stores (55%), online marketplaces such as Amazon (43%), search engines such as Google (41%), wish lists from friends or family (40%), social media (28%), brand websites (22%), retail websites (22%), video ads on TV or streaming services (10%), print ads (10%), AI chatbots (9%), product review websites (8%), gift guides or blogs (8%), online forums such as Reddit (7%), delivery apps (5%), and finally podcast ads (4%).
As for what people prefer to buy, U.S. shoppers are looking at the following categories:
- Fashion and apparel (54%)
- Electronics (50%)
- Personal care and beauty (40%)
- Food and beverage (36%)
- Alcohol (25%)
Discussion Questions
Will holiday shopping spend in 2025 outperform last year’s numbers? If so, how significantly? If not, why not?
Will increasing pressure on consumers and retailers due to tariffs, as signaled by many retail and business analysts, change projections as existing inventory sells through?
How accurate is the portrayal of the data suggesting that brick-and-mortar retailers are not a destination for deals, but rather valuable locations for product discovery?
Poll
Loading …BrainTrust
Melissa Minkow
Director, Retail Strategy, CI&T
David Weinand
Chief Customer Officer, Incisiv
Jeff Sward
Founding Partner, Merchandising Metrics
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Far, far too early to make any kind of meaningful prediction; amidst all the disagreement about the tariffs and their impact, there is agreement on one thing: whatever their impact will be, it’s still in the future. And, of course, if the impact is an increase in prices – say something modest like 5% – what meaning will a “4, 5 or even 6% increase in YoY sales have? Come back in October.
I am making a good salary from home $1400-$2400/week , which is amazing, under a year back I was jobless in a horrible economy. I thank God every day I was blessed with these instructions and now it’s my duty to pay it forward and share it with Everyone,
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The success of holiday always depends on how good consumers deem the deals to be. With tariffs, I’m expecting the discounts to be on all the excess product retailers over-ordered to get ahead of the increase in prices. When that last happened, holiday numbers weren’t great.
These kind of surveys are interesting, but they are not accurate predictors of spending – not this far out anyway and certainly not with a sample of 500 people! There are also too many uncertainties around tariffs and prices to provide meaningful guidance at this stage. What we also need to keep in mind is people spending more (value increases) does not always translated into volume increases because of inflation and tariff induced price rises!
A 500 person shopper survey over two continents is meaningless. As a researcher, it annoys me that this type of stuff even gets coverage.
IMO, holiday will not beat ’24. Uncertainty reigns, and assuming the Trump tariffs ACTUALLY are enacted, prices will be far higher by Q4
It’s too early to answer, especially because the latest tariffs threatened for August 1st are a “known unknown.” If inflation picks up as a result (or product shortages get worse), then it’s not going to be a great holiday season.
While making for interesting reading, the predictive value of this survey is questionable due to size, event lead time, and the existence of an unusual amount of policy uncertainty. Nevertheless, holiday success in 2025 won’t correlate with total spending. Retailers that can maintain lean inventory while building margin-protective private label capacity will capture disproportionate profit share, regardless of what the spending surveys predict. Watch for inventory turnover rates, not consumer sentiment surveys.
Love that…profit share vs market share.
In normal times, we could probably make some decent predictions in July about holiday spending. Right now, the political/tariff/rate cut environment is so volitile that we’d need a Ouiji board and a couple of dart boards just to put together a good guess. What is interesting is that the inventory is on order. The orders have been placed and the product is in various stages of work. So…who bought how much of what? Expecting to sell it at what margins? Based on what tariff rates?
Given the current administration’s strategy of introducing chaos into markets at every turn, it’s hard to forecast anything past Friday, and even that is iffy.
By the end of Q3 we’ll have a much better feeling for the impact of tariffs on consumer sentiment; they haven’t really kicked in yet. We also haven’t seen the impact of mass deportations on food prices.
It’s still too early to say how much customers will spend during the 2025 holiday season. Their behavior can change quickly, especially when new deals and promotions start rolling out.
Even if some plan to spend less, many end up shopping more when they see the right offer. Retailers should treat this early data as a starting point, not a final answer.
Will consumers spend more on the coming holiday season? No doubt! It will be a little more or a lot more, depending on how upended the economy is. Will they buy more stuff, than previously? No! There is nothing in any economic projections that suggests that. Even population growth is a measly 0.5%
This one is for Neil. How many times (excluding the pandemic) has retail holiday volume (not dollars) shown y-o-y growth over the last two decades?
Far too early, with the rapid policy changes that is coming from Washington everything from trade policies, interest rate to supply chain availability is uncertain. We will have to wait for another quarter to see how things go
The portrayal of the data suggesting that brick-and-mortar retailers are not a destination for deals, but rather valuable locations for product discovery, is accurate especially for younger audiences. Many want to see and explore their options in person before making a purchase.