Holiday shoppers want fast, easy, cheap shopping experience

Today’s holiday shopper is shifting from traditional in-store shopping to a fast, mobile-centric experience and focused on completing holiday shopping in just under six hours.

Those are findings from the second annual Celigo 2024 Holiday Shopping Trends report which also revealed the majority of global holiday consumers will be spending less than $1,000 on gifts this year.

Celigo is an integration platform as a service for business and IT users. Its report surveyed 4,000 global consumers across North America and the U.K., according to a press release.

Additional highlights include:

• Over half of the respondents will start their holiday shopping later this season, with 53% beginning in October — a noticeable shift from last year when nearly 50% started in September.
• Despite reports of cooling inflation, shoppers are more price-conscious than ever, with 85% of respondents describing themselves as either “very price conscious” or “fairly price conscious” when holiday shopping this year.
• Younger consumers, particularly Generation Z, are driving a continued shift to mobile and social media shopping. In fact, 67% of 18-to-24-year-olds and 65% of 25-to-35-year-olds will use their cell phones for holiday shopping, while nearly half of all consumers will shop for gifts on social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram and Facebook.
• This year, the majority of shoppers will do more gift buying online, citing convenience, product availability and speedy delivery as the top reasons they will rely more on online channels as opposed to physical stores.