It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like…

When Mark Ballard, Director of Research at Tinuiti, first looked at the results of a holiday shopping survey it conducted recently, he was struck by one recurring theme: “People expect to spend more on holiday gifts this year than last year,” Ballard said. “What did surprise me is the degree to which inflation is still top of mind.”

Tinuiti surveyed more than 1,000 U.S. adults who said they were going to shop for holiday gifts this year with 72% of respondents indicating that the rate of inflation will have a somewhat negative impact on their holiday spending. Tinuiti is one of the largest independent brand performance-marketing agencies and released its 2024 Holiday Shopper Study on August 21.

Ballard sat down with StreetFight to give his insights on what the survey results could portend for marketers and retailers.

StreetFight: What jumped out at you from this particular data set compared to any previous data sets that you’ve done about holiday shopping?

MB: We got into some new topic areas this year, including how consumers expect to use AI platforms, as they’re out there shopping. Tinuiti asked specifically, are you going to use ChatGPT for any purposes? Just three percent of respondents said they would. We asked about six or seven different use cases for using it and left it up to the respondents to think of what platforms they might use to find product deals, compare products, summarize product reviews, to try on a product virtually, those types of things. Only 46% said they didn’t plan to do any of these things using AI. It’s something everyone’s hearing a lot about. For many people something like Siri or Alexa is an AI tool. The way we asked it was kind of leaving it to the consumer to envision what they consider AI.

StreetFight: Can you give me either a real-world example of how marketers and retailers can use this report to make most of their holiday shopping season?

MB: A big part of why we do this report is our client-facing teams are talking to these brands every day as they’re planning out their holiday strategies. So [we asked ] consumers, about shopping in October. Is self-gifting really a trend? It is certainly helpful for them to know. If I want to reach Gen Z, what are the platforms they’re using? It’s helping to provide that context as they’re making those larger plans.

StreetFight: The results show that 34% of respondents said they plan to spend more online this year. Can we make a correlation that people still do or don’t enjoy the in-store shopping experience?

MB: Over time we’re seeing more sales happening online, certainly, that’s been the trend for years, and that continues. But in-store is still a big part of all retail shopping and specifically holiday shopping. Just seven percent of consumers say they will shop online exclusively, and 93% of shoppers will be shopping in-store. A significant number of those say they’ll spend half of their money in-store. People like being able to browse in a store for certain types of products, and it is a way to discover products. It’s just that visceral experience that people crave.

StreetFight: What other trend are you seeing?

MB: People say they’re shopping earlier, and you’re definitely seeing brands make a big play for those early shoppers. The biggest of all is Amazon, which had a Prime Day-type of event in October to try to get those early holiday shoppers. Seventy-five percent of the people we asked said they plan to shop on Amazon this year. [Amazon] can definitely steer the thinking of the average gift giver out there. And, if they’re putting on a huge savings event in October, it’s going to draw in a lot of buyers. I certainly think Amazon is hoping that becomes a thing, maybe not quite up there with Black Friday, but close.

StreetFight: Social media for product discovery remains strong with 64% of Gen Z citing it as a source for holiday purchase ideas. Do you ever see that waning?

MB: Not any time soon. The social media channel that continues to be big for young people is TikTok but that’s more of a short-form video with social elements to it as opposed to Facebook which is more of a pure social media. That umbrella continues to grow and evolve. I don’t see something new coming along that *doesn’t* have a social element to it. The AI platforms are interesting but they’re still not really resonating in the same way as these major social platforms, which will continue to be the single biggest source for product discovery and sharing for the foreseeable future.