Home > SCT News Home

SCT News Home

U.S. consumers plan to spend about $543 each this holiday season, survey says

ICSC and Goldman Sachs’ 2009 Holiday Spending Survey found that U.S. consumers plan to spend about $543 during this year’s holiday season on gifts with another $133 on gift cards. Consumers expect to spend more this year on gift purchases than last year, but less on gift cards.

Consumers reported that shopping on Black Friday—the Friday (November 27) after Thanksgiving Day—is likely to be more important this season as 16 percent of respondents expect to begin their holiday gift shopping on that day. This is marked increase from prior years, which have ranged from 10 percent in 2007 and 2008 to a previous high of 13 percent in 2006. "This pattern is not totally surprising," said Goldman, Sachs & Co.’s Global Investment Research analyst Michelle Tan. "Traffic has been increasingly concentrated in key shopping periods with deeper lulls in between and these survey results suggest that this trend will continue during the 2009 holiday season," noted Tan.

"Bargain hunting will continue to be an important element of the consumers’ holiday shopping strategy," noted Michael P. Niemira, ICSC’s director of research and chief economist. However, Niemira observed that "Despite what consumers now expect, ICSC Research thinks the holiday spending performance will be better than these pre-season consumer expectations, which is often the case following business cycle turning points in the economy."

The ICSC-Goldman Sachs Holiday Survey is based on a nationally representative sample of 1,000 adults,18 years of age and older, living in private households in the continental United States. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points for the entire sample. The survey was conducted via telephone by Opinion Research Corporation during the period of October 29-November 1, 2009.