The 2016 holiday shopping season kicks off with Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, and Giving Tuesday. The holidays are our annual return to tradition, but the ways we shop for those celebrations are anything but traditional – and young adult shoppers are leading the way.
Seventy-two percent of adults under age 35 “believe that they can get deals during Black Friday that they can’t get at any other time.” Sixty-three percent of Generation X holds the same belief, compared to 48 percent of Baby Boomers.
Millennials back up that belief with their wallets: 73 percent of us – more than any other generation – typically shop on Black Friday, whether that’s in a store, on our web browser, or in apps. The latter two options have become increasingly popular this year.
Online sales hit a record-breaking $3.34 billion on Black Friday, with $1.2 billion being spent on mobile apps. Five years ago, shoppers were hearing, “You don’t have to go to the store, just go to the web site.” Now, shoppers don’t have to go to the web site; they can just click on the app. Retailers need to refocus their efforts to keep up with the transition to mobile shopping. “Target, for example, saw a 200 percent increase over last year in mobile app sales. The increased traffic even crashed Macy’s site.”
What are we buying on all those apps, anyway? The New York Times noted a huge increase in the proportion of spending done at dollar stores, plus an upswing in the amount spent on kitchen items for Friendsgiving and other holiday meals shared with non-family members. Big box retailers and department stores are a mainstay of the “retail holiday” as well.
The deals offered in stores are reflected online – and consumers aren’t waiting until Cyber Monday to take advantage. Brick and mortar stores are continually expanding their post-Thanksgiving hours, but the internet is open 24/7. Online mega-retailer Amazon.com benefits from this constant accessibility. According to Inquisitr, “Amazon had, in fact, said that Thanksgiving mobile orders were particularly good, as consumers ordered more items on turkey day than they did on Cyber Monday 2015.” If you can’t pull yourself away from the leftovers or the football games in order to start shopping, well, mobile apps mean that you don’t have to.
Most in-store shoppers still used mobile technology to aid their quest for great deals. An estimated 58 percent of offline shoppers used their phones to check prices, to verify that the advertised price was, in fact, a deal. For millennial shoppers, the proportion of in-store mobile price checkers jumps up to 72 percent.
The generation gap in holiday shopping patterns is significant, and so is the gender gap. The trope of the procrastinating man scrambling to shop for gifts on Christmas Eve just doesn’t ring true anymore (if it ever did in the first place). Fourteen percent more men than women do at least some of their holiday shopping on Black Friday and/or Cyber Monday. Men are more likely to think that timing gets them more bang for their buck: 69 percent of male shoppers believe that Black Friday brings uniquely special deals, compared to 58 percent of women who believe the same.
Freed from normal shopping schedules by apps and mobile web shopping, young adults are “spreading out more widely the days they open their wallets.” Retailers are banking on us, and hoping that the formerly one-day consumer “holiday” will last all season long.
