Product review videos to influence holiday shopping

Dive Brief:

• Indicating the influence of social media, over three-fourths (76%) of holiday shoppers said product review videos are likely to sway their buying decisions. Slightly fewer respondents said product reviews (66%)  and retailer influence (66%) could influence their holiday shopping choices, according to a Circana report. 
• YouTube is the top social media platform shoppers plan to use when researching their holiday purchases, followed by Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, X (formerly Twitter) and Reddit. TikTok and Facebook rose in the rankings compared to last year, according to the survey of over 3,500 respondents. 
• While more than a third (37%) of shoppers already began their holiday shopping in September, a third of respondents said they plan to start buying their holiday items this month, and nearly a quarter (24%) are beginning in early November, the survey found. The share of shoppers starting their holiday shoppers in October rose from last year, but the proportion of shoppers waiting until early November dipped.

Dive Insight:

Black Friday remains a critical day for retailers, according to Circana’s report. Nearly a quarter (24%) of survey respondents said they anticipate finding the best deals that day. Twenty percent of respondents plan to kick off their holiday shopping on Black Friday, but only 3% will begin on Cyber Monday. 

Circana’s research builds upon other reports indicating that consumers are hunting for deals more during Black Friday than Cyber Monday. A Bain & Company report projects that U.S. retail sales will grow by 5% from last year between Black Friday and Cyber Monday to a record $75 billion. Cyber Monday hasn’t been the top ten sales day for U.S. consumers since 2019, but Black Friday was the second biggest sales day in 2021 and 2023, per Bain & Company’s research. 

Younger shoppers are more likely to rely on social media platforms to find and buy their holiday goods than older consumers, but it remains to be seen which site will garner the greatest sales. An eMarketer report released in August found that less than half (42%) of Gen Z shoppers will buy their gifts through social media, followed by millennials (26%), Gen Xers (15%) and baby boomers (6%). The platforms consumers plan to turn to for holiday gifts are Instagram (57%), Facebook (56%), TikTok (43%) and YouTube (38%). Meanwhile, another report from Fiverr found that almost 54% of Gen Zers plan to look for their gifts via TikTok Shop alone. 

“Consumers are not as tethered to the uncertainty of the last several years, and they finally feel stable enough to embrace holiday shopping again,” Marshal Cohen, chief retail advisor at Circana, said in the report. 

To capture consumers waiting to spend, retailers are rolling out various price cuts. Dollar General, for example, said it will have discounts and deals on 6,000 products this holiday season. Similarly, Target said it planned to cut prices on more than 2,000 items across its product selection, a move it made after previously reducing prices on 5,000 items in May.