​Shoppers will be more “intentional” and price-conscious this holiday spending season with 83% comparing prices and 65% planning to shop during sales to save money.

That’s according to Shopify’s Holiday Retail Report for which it spoke to 18,000 consumers across Europe, Australasia and North America. 

Interestingly, it found the UK to be the only market internationally where consumers plan to spend significantly more this year. In fact, spending among UK consumers around Black Friday-Cyber Monday 2024 is set to increase by 21% compared to last year — rising from £131.67 to £159.22 on average per shopper.

But it added that “any increased spending is unlikely to be frivolous” given the aforementioned intention to focus on price and to shop around.

The study showed that discounts are important but so are free shipping and returns as far as boosting customer loyalty is concerned. Shopper loyalty is driven by discounts (50%) but free shipping and/or returns is important for 42% of consumers.

In fact, shipping costs are a top-3 bugbear for UK consumers (38%), followed by a lack of discounts and delivery taking longer than expected (both 26%).

So price aside, where and what will people be shopping this season?

While young shoppers say they’ll be buying from social media in high numbers – 59% of 18-24s on Instagram, and even more on TikTok (62%) – the older social media platforms such as Facebook appear to be gradually falling out of favour.

Facebook’s popularity among 18-24 year olds has fallen from 25% likely to shop on it last year to 23% this year.

We’re also told that 21% of shoppers are seeking independent brands, suggesting an appreciation for more local or personalised buying experiences. 

However, that doesn’t necessarily mean online stores are set to lose out provided they can offer a tailored experience for consumers, especially as 57% say it’s important to buy from a person.

And its seems that in line with this year’s more general trend toward physical stores, in-store is back in favour for festive shopping as consumers split their purchases between the physical and the digital.

Some 44% of consumers plan to evenly split their shopping online and offline, with 59% buying small things online but going into stores for larger purchases. 

Festive shopping is obviously a big deal for e-tailers as it has increasingly become in the last decade. Some 33% of consumers plan to do the bulk of their spending online and only 17% expect to do so in-store, although that rises to to 23% of spontaneous purchasers, “suggesting that brick-and-mortar merchants could benefit from offering in-store deals to drive footfall”.