US Consumer Spending and Retail Sales Shifts for Holiday 2020: Covid-19 Impacts

What’s Inside

This report is part of our 12 Weeks of Holidays series, in which we present key data, trends and observations as we count down to the peak holiday season.

We provide findings on how US consumer spending and retail sales have shifted amid Covid-19—and how we expect them to change further for the holiday season. Our discussion focuses on five data sets:

1. Spending on key service categories such as restaurants, leisure services and travel—we consider how much consumers spent during holiday 2019 and provide our estimates for the holiday quarter in 2020. We discuss what the dollar changes mean for retail.
2. Exclusive survey findings on shoppers’ expectations to switch spending from services to products during the holiday season—including which retail categories could gain
3. Discretionary consumer spending shifts so far this year, with a review of the changes in 17 discretionary product and service categories and the total dollar impact
4. Coresight Research survey data on where holiday shoppers expect to cut their spending this year
5. Shifts in retail sales this year—we quantify the scale of the increases and decreases in retail sales by sector, from food to home-improvement to nonstore retail, to see where in retail consumer dollars are flowing to.

We consider the opportunities for retailers and provide recommendations to build retail sales this holiday season.

Click here to read the previous report in the 12 Weeks of Holidays series, which discusses last-mile shipping for the holiday season.

Click here to read all Coresight Research coverage of US holiday retail.