Last month, we looked at when people do their holiday shopping. And we saw that 61 percent of holiday 2019 consumers expected to begin shopping before Thanksgiving. Today, we study revenue forecasts — holiday 2019 revenues expected to reach $1 trillion.
If you are interested, read about the 2018 holiday shopping season. Then, compare 2019 with 2018.
For the First Time: U.S. Holiday 2019 Revenues Expected to Reach $1 Trillion
“Despite healthy consumer spending overall in 2019, the upcoming holiday season will be affected by economic uncertainty and a shorter time frame. ” [Note: due to the lateness of Thanksgiving 2019, this year has six fewer days between Thanksgiving and Christmas than in 2018.)] “We forecast that total US holiday retail sales will climb 3.8% to $1.008 trillion this year. Resulting in the first-ever trillion-dollar holiday season. Last year saw even less growth, at 2.4%.”
“Brick-and-mortar remains dominant. In-store sales for the 2019 holiday season will increase by 2.5% to $872.25 billion. Brick-and-mortar still represents the majority (86.6%) of holiday sales. However, its share has steadily declined.”
Review the chart for overall 2015-2019 U.S. holiday revenues.
Furthermore, eMarketer notes that:
“We expect Cyber Monday to again be the biggest online shopping day in U.S. history. With a total that could approach — or even surpass — $10 billion. Black Friday, Thanksgiving. and .Cyber Tuesday. should also rank among the leading days for the season. E-commerce sales this holiday season will increase 13.2% to $135.35 billion. That means E-commerce will represent 13.4% of all holiday retail sales this year, a figure that has been growing steadily.”
To conclude, review the chart for 2015-2019 U.S. holiday E-commerce revenues.
Since the holidays are closer by now and the time frame is less, consumers would be dedicated to buy products at the last moment, which in result may increase the sales. Majority of people always wait for the best deals to get the best buck out of it and what more can it be than the holidays. Black friday and Christmas always have those consumers that need to buy at the last moment and sometimes in the last moment they get the best deal out of it. I won’t be surprised if this year the retailers more profit than last year.
Interestingly, sales are expected to increase to over $1 trillion even though consumers have fewer shopping days. This increase in sales may be caused by panicked consumer spending. If consumers have less time [6 days] between thanksgiving and Christmas, they cannot shop around more and therefore will be spending more money on their gifts.
It is because holiday shopping starts earlier every year.
Back in China, we have a Chinese version of cyber Monday which was created by Alibaba group in 2009 and we call it Double 11 or Single’s Day. This year, Alibaba logged more than 268 billion yuan ($38.3 billion) of purchases during its Singles’ Day bonanza, exceeding last year’s record haul after a 24-hour shopping marathon. I think it is somehow weird that people are simultaneously spending money on a specific day, there literally are some discounts and deals but I think a great deal of purchase decisions are excessive and irrational. It is difficult to stay calm and rational when everyone else is buying something, FOMO.