← Behind the Numbers: an EMARKETER Podcast
Behind the Numbers: an EMARKETER Podcast
What the 2025 Thanksgiving Period Told Us About This Year’s Holiday Shopping Season | Reimagining Retail
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A
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Hi everyone. Today is Wednesday, December 10th. Welcome to eMarketers weekly retail show Reimagining retail, an E marketer podcast made possible by via set Cats. This is the show where we talk about how retail collides with every part of our lives. I'm your host, Susie Deva Kenya. And on today's episode, we're going beyond the Thanksgiving headlines to tackle the myths and mixed signals shaping the holiday season's biggest storylines and what that actually means for the final stretch of 2025. Joining me today we have two two podcast regulars in the office. With me at our studios is analyst Rachel Wolf. Hi, Rachel.
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B
Hey, Susie.
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A
So nice to have you. And senior analyst Zach Stamborg joining us from Chicago.
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C
Hey, Zach. Hey guys.
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A
So when you look at the top line results, this Thanksgiving weekend was massive. NRF called it a record 203 million shoppers. More people than we've ever seen across those five days. And Adobe showed online spending hitting new highs and with Cyber Monday alone crossing 14 billion. But then we also had Macy's CEO telling us last week during their earnings call that shoppers are still selective and pulling back in certain categories. So with headlines swinging from record breaking to shoppers pulling back, it's really honestly hard to make heads or tails of how we should feel about the holidays right now. But before we dig in, I wanted to do a very quick poll on, on what? Did you buy or did you skip buying anything during Cyber5?
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C
Zach, oh my goodness. I bought so much and I did it on Black Friday. Yes, I did it all online.
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And I'm almost all done with my shopping.
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A
I've gotta say, you're not part of the half of the people who still haven't finished.
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C
I never do this, but I just got started and there were pretty decent deals and so I just kept going and I bought from several different retailers. I bought a Lego set, I bought a backpack, I bought some running gear.
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All sorts of stuff.
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A
It kind of sounds like you did self gifting in addition to.
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C
It was gift giving. It was not running gear for me actually. It was for my, my sons.
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A
Rachel, what about you?
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B
I was a little more conservative than Zach. I bought a handful of things, you know, like pair of AirPods. I also bought running gear, although for myself. But I, I think, you know, I honestly felt like the deals weren't as great, and I needed to do a lot more comparison shopping to find the best deals. So that was my Black Friday Cyber Monday experience.
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A
Yeah, mine was like that too. I bought. Well, I said two, but I bought everything for myself. And I was trying to buy a tv, which I haven't bought one in so long, and I used LLMs and it kind of discouraged me, so I didn't even end up buying one. But I did buy lots of other stuff.
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C
You can buy it closer to the super bowl and get a good deal.
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A
The. A tv. I don't. Yeah, it wasn't even that I. I was looking for a deal. So much as. I don't understand. There's so much technology now. It's evolved so much. And apparently what I was looking for was good enough. And I. I don't do well with good enough.
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C
Yeah, it's very confusing.
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A
So I didn't. Yeah, so I didn't pull the trigger. Okay. So we could keep talking about what everybody bought. It sounds like everybody really helped support those big numbers. But let's start with some more basic things. The results were big, but within that, there were some surprises. What surprised you most, Rachel?
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B
So this is kind of maybe a bit more. I don't want to say random, but it was just a stat that really jumped out to me that I thought was interesting. And that's TikTok shop, which generated over $500 million in sales over. Over Black Friday Cyber Monday. And I was doing a little bit of the sort of back of the envelope math, looking at $44.2 billion in total online spending across Cyber5. So that would be a little over 1% of total E commerce spending, which is pretty outrageous when you consider that it's only been around for a little over two years. So I think that just tells you how much of a commerce engine it's becoming.
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A
Right. TikTok shop, and probably all Influencer Creator. Any of those channels are much more than just a search engine. They're really a conversion engine now.
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B
Right. And I think it tells you, you know, what is getting shoppers to convert. And that's content, that is entertaining, that is informative, and, you know, the ability to get an impulse purchase whenever you feel like it.
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A
Yeah, absolutely. What about you, Zach?
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C
Even with so many people shopping on Black Friday and throughout the holiday weekend.
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There weren't as many people shopping at a lot of department stores than there were last year. We saw declines at JCPenney, at Macy's, @ Kohl's and Dillard's. Just had the tiniest possible increase of just like half a percent. And so it really was a sign that these like mid market department stores faced some real.
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A
Challenges. And so do you think that the surprise here is even there's selective purchasing, that consumers are chasing deals but they're willing to buy anything that kind of floats.
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C
Their.
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I think people are really on the hunt for value. And so we saw very big gains in foot traffic at Ross, at TJ Maxx, at a lot of off price retailers. And so I think it's just a sign that consumers don't associate these department stores with strong value in.
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A
Deal. Yeah. Which is a surprise. And somehow I feel like we've been talking about this for a while. One of the things that surprised me was how important mobile is. Can you guys talk a little bit more about that? Because it really feels like mobile was a default now. Right. It helped spur buy now, pay.
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C
Later.
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A
Yeah. It helps spur social.
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Commerce. Yeah. It's so interesting because like even on Cyber Monday, which was a day that originated because consumers were using the high speed Internet in their offices to shop online.
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People are using their mobile devices to shop online. Obviously you don't need your work high speed Internet anymore, but you are largely in front of your computer most of the day. Nonetheless, people were using their phones and like 57.5% of purchases on Cyber Monday were on a mobile device. And like you said, those mobile orders or mobile is facilitating buy now, pay later, which is just rapidly emerging as one of the primary ways people are buying online and financing their.
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A
Purchases. Yeah, and we're seeing, I mean we know from our forecast data that E commerce penetration is higher during the holiday season, but so is mobile commerce. So as brands think about Thanksgiving and winning, you have to make sure you have a good.
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App. Yeah, I mean, I guess personal antidote. I bought everything from my phone. I didn't use my desktop at all. So clearly, I mean, not saying that I'm indicative of the rest of.
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The population, but it's, it's a.
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Signal.
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Right. Okay, so I'm going to zoom out for a second because underneath all of these results we're also seeing a few big tension points. And we've been talking a lot about this places where the narrative doesn't really line up with the data. So I wanted to break down a few of them to try and figure out the signals versus what's actually happening and how that's shaping the seasons. So the first tension is this idea that the shopper is fragile. There's a lot of narrative around the, you know, headwinds. The economy is not doing well, people are pulling back. And yet we're also seeing a lot of retailers post their results right now with significant comp sales up. So tell me more about that. What do you make of.
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C
It? I this I think is the most interesting one because it's people are conditioned to spend even when they are feeling pressured. And there was a survey out that I saw that it's nearly a third of consumers were prepared and ready to take on debt this season to make their holiday purchases. And so however they're going to do it, consumers are going to buy their holiday gifts. Now there was a really interesting survey result that I saw just last week when Gallup asked consumers how much they expected to spend on holiday gifts in November. People estimated $778. That was $229 less than October and $234 less than last year. Now every year there's usually consumers usually trim how much they expect to spend as the season progresses, but that shift is usually like $40 or so. This decline is one of the biggest or is the biggest ever recorded, even surpassing the drop during the financial crisis. And so I think that's a real warning sign and a sign that consumers are feeling a little uneasy about taking on some of that.
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Debt. Yeah. And I think the other thing to keep in mind too is that a lot of the growth in sales is just being driven by higher prices. Right. I think Salesforce had this stat that, you know, they said that US online shopping rose 3% but there was a 7% jump in average selling price. So people are just paying more. But actually in terms of units sold, it's gone down. So people are just having to manage higher.
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A
Prices. Yeah, that's a great point. And I think sort of teasing out what you were saying, Zach, there's also this decoupling of consumer sentiment with what they're spending. And so to your point, Rachel, it's not maybe that they want to spend more is they kind of don't have a choice. And that goes back to what the Macy CEO was saying, that they're just more selective and it's not a.
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C
Monolith. You know, affluent consumers whose wages have risen quite a bit are spending freely. They feel fine. But the lower income and middle income consumers are pulling back a bit. And so it's not one big movement. There's a little nuance there that's really.
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Important. I think that's a great place to end on that one. Tension can't Group everybody into one bucket. The other tension that I'm keeping an eye on is this one around timing and budgets. When I was going through the ranks at Macy's, we talked a lot about the calendar for holiday. The purchasing calendar is moving forward more and it's creeping into November, further into November and then further into October. So there's a big push for retailers to try and capture that dollar early on because people have budgets. But this year it really feels like people are buying all the time. There isn't a moment where there's a big hourglass figure, right, of like a big spike at the beginning and a big spike at the end with all the late gift giver purchases who need to get something just before Christmas or Hanukkah. And so what does that look like? It's no longer about a bookend calendar and a set fixed budget. Right. It feels like there's that tension.
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Too. Well, I think that's the challenge for retailers because so many of them have relied on these October sales to try and capture that early spending. But as we saw this year, I mean that kind of had a mixed, they had mixed results for companies like Amazon. So I think the question is, going forward, do you continue to extend that calendar or do you gradually pare back and maybe center your deepest discounts again around Black Friday and Cyber.
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C
Monday? I also think the way in which consumers shop in October is different than the way that they shop in November and particularly in December. I think a lot of that October spending is on essentials and to some extent self gifting. And then as the calendar turns to November and particularly December, I think that's when people feel pressed to just like get the gifts. Because the clock's.
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Ticking.
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Pressure. Yeah, because it's almost Christmas and you need to have the gift under the.
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Tree. Right. That's where you're no longer quite as selective. And I mean, to your point, earlier 1 and 2 have not finished shopping for the holidays post cyber 5. So there's still dollars to be had, people still looking for presents. So the third tension for me at least for this season is around AI because depending on who you listen to, AI is either transforming the holiday shopping season or it's still really small and just an early adopter behavior. The growth numbers are massive, but if you think about it, the base is still pretty modest. So it's this weird mix of is this the future or is this really, really even just moving the needle? What do you guys.
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Think? Well, I'll start with the stat and to go back to Salesforce. They claim that AI and AI agents influence 17% of orders placed in the US during Cyber Week. So that would be about $13.5 billion in sales, which is a huge.
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Number.
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Right. But I think you have to investigate that a little bit and think about, well, is it that people really are using chatgpt or Perplexity to find products and to make decisions for them, or is it they're going on Amazon's website, they're asking Rufus a couple of questions and is that then the sum total of their interaction with.
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C
AI? I think that's exactly right. I think the way in which search exists has just shifted to Rufus, to Sparky and all of these sorts of tools. And so I don't think most people are thinking of it in terms of I'm using AI, they're just thinking I'm using search and getting slightly different results than I used to, if they're even thinking about it at.
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B
All. Yeah. And I do think that people are starting to experiment with these tools to figure out what it is that they can do for them in terms of finding gift ideas or uncovering the best deals. But I don't think we're at that point yet where people are relying on them to make the entire purchase decision on it for.
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A
Them. Oh yes, the agentic piece. Yes, absolutely right. It's more. Well.
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That. But even just taking their recommendations at face value. Got.
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It. Yeah. I think it's interesting because depending on what stats you see, like there was also One that said AI driven traffic to retail sites was up 670%, but again, on a very small basis. Right. We weren't, there weren't as many LLMs that were operating as marketplaces last year, if any, to really try and measure that.
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B
Number. Yeah. I mean, there was another survey from visa. Half of US shoppers, 47% have used an AI tool for at least one shopping task. I mean, there are huge numbers associated with all these surveys and traffic data, but again, it's still a very small portion of the.
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Population. Yes. And it's also like you were saying before, the embedded tools that are AI, that sort of help guide versus truly convert and LLMs that are third.
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Parties. But I think as these tools do get better at guiding people, whether it's just on a retailer's website or elsewhere, I think it shows the promise of delivering strong results. I just don't think it's actually doing it to much extent.
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A
Yet. Right. And I think that it's the holidays is a good time to use guided experiences because it's such a stressful time and you're trying to do too many things in at once and you're worried about what you're buying for other people. But AI right now is a guide and it sounds like social commerce based on your TikTok stat is actually what's helping convert right now, at least. Okay, so before we wrap, I do want to leave our listeners with something practical. So if eMarketer was building a time capsule for holiday 2026, what is one thing that each of you would tell a retailer that they should remember for next.
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B
Year? Rachel so my advice is to make sure your website is optimized to handle an increase in traffic, particularly on mobile. And this is based on my own Black Friday experience of struggling with very slow websites, which actually stopped me from buying more than I would have done otherwise. So I think that's definitely something that retailers need to think.
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About.
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Zach? Yeah, I think don't lose sight of the importance of the Cyber 5, which I think is an obvious point to some extent. But the season has gotten so long. There's so much emphasis on pulling sales into October and even early November that you don't want to deploy all of your very best deals early on. You want to save some for the prime time when consumers are ready and willing and eager to.
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Shop. No, because I think it's such a good point that you need to make sure that you have fresh new merchandise throughout the the season versus just at the beginning. And so for me, fresh merchandise goes with the promos. Like you need to have strong.
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C
Offering throughout, make your promotions interesting and make them attractive to consumers. I know sky has referenced on this podcast primary offering free delivery for an entire year when you make a purchase over $50. They did that again this year. Target attempted to do something by offering swag bags to the first hundred people I think who were in line. Now that backfired. So, you know, you have to find promotions that resonate or will potentially resonate with.
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Consumers. Yeah, that was mine too. About the in the time capsule I would have put make sure that you realize it's like a steady Eddie sort of wins the race versus like spurts of beginning and end. But the other one that I would think that is critical as we continue to talk about AI is don't forget how important people are in the equation and that social and stores and that human authentic connection will really help drive more sales. That's all the time we have for today. Thank you.
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Rachel. Thanks for having.
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Me. Thanks.
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Zach. Yeah, happy to be.
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A
Here. And thank you listeners and to our team that edits the podcast. Please leave a rating or review and remember to subscribe. I'll see you for more reimagining retail next Wednesday. And on Friday, join Marcus for another episode of behind the Numbers, an emarketer podcast made possible by viasat.
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Ads.
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Sam.