Modern Retail x Attest Research: Gen Z will turn to Temu and Shein for Black Friday shopping

This is according to a new Modern Retail+ survey done in partnership with the consumer research platform Attest. We asked over 1,700 consumers where they planned to shop on Black Friday. While most said they would shop at destinations like Amazon (80%) and Walmart (62%), in fourth place — behind Target (37%) and Best Buy (24%) — was Temu (21%). Shein only slightly trailed, with 14% of the respondents saying they planned on shopping on the low-priced apparel platform.

Both Shein and Temu are proving to be particularly popular with the younger generations. According to the survey, more than one-quarter of Gen Z respondents said they planned to do their Black Friday shopping on Temu and 24% listed Shein.

Both of these players have been gaining ground over the last year. As Modern Retail previously reported, Temu recently opened up its seller pool after being invite-only. And Shein has been preparing for an upcoming IPO.

The rise of these two low-priced e-commerce platforms is clearly causing alarm at some of the bigger players. Earlier this month, Amazon unveiled Haul, which sells products at prices even cheaper than its usual marketplace.

Though e-commerce will be a dominant part of this year’s Black Friday shopping, people are still planning on shopping in stores. According to the survey, 29% said they would purchase their Black Friday items solely online while 57% said they planned to do both online and in-person shopping.

Gen Z, meanwhile, seems to be less keen on shopping digitally. Only 25% said they would purchase their gifts online, while 62% said they planned to do Black Friday shopping both online and in-store.

All eyes will be on this weekend to see how this year stacks up to previous Black Friday/Cyber Mondays. According to Adobe Analytics, U.S. shoppers are expected to spend $240.8 billion this November and December, an 8.4% increase from the previous year.