A survey by business services firm JLL reveals most shoppers will keep their holiday budgets intact this year, spending on average $868, about the same as last year’s $870 average.
Inflation will have a deeper impact on how consumers with lower incomes shop for the holidays, according to the JLL survey, with 49.7% of consumers earning less than $50,000 planning to cut their budgets, while only about 24% of those earning $150,000 intending to do the same.
More than 63% of the JLL survey respondents said they plan to do at least some of their shopping in stores this year, up from 58% last year.
More consumers plan to shop special deal days from home rather than in stores, JLL maintained. Black Friday will be the most popular deal day for in-store shopping, with 39.7% of survey respondents planning to shop that day in person. More respondents said they plan to shop Black Friday online at 54.2%. Cyber Monday topped online shopping plans, with 54.3% of respondents planning to shop digitally, while only 26.4% of consumers will venture to stores on Cyber Monday.
Early shopping is popular, especially among affluent shoppers. This year, 53.8% of respondents said they would participate in pre-Thanksgiving shopping. Some 20% are early birds who said they like to start checking off their gift lists before Halloween. Almost one-third of affluent consumers stated they like to start holiday shopping before October.
