Why it matters:
- Consumers are worried about their budgets and concerned about price increases in 2025, meaning retailers and brands will have to work harder to grow sales.
- How consumers are shopping is changing rapidly, with more than half of online purchases being made on phones and other mobile devices and 86% of shoppers using social media to get product recommendations.
- Chatbots are becoming key salespeople, with AI shopping assistants driving $14.1 billion in sales on Black Friday.
This holiday season, Americans spent more time shopping on their phones and less time shopping in stores. They used new shopping apps and online marketplaces, and they rewarded brands and merchants who knew how to reach them where they were browsing or buying.
With the retail environment expected to be challenging in 2025, as cost-conscious consumers worry about possible price increases, brands and stores need to be able to connect effectively with shoppers.
Here are the key lessons from this holiday season that retailers will be leaning into in 2025.
Retailers need to prioritize mobile shopping
E-commerce was the big winner this holiday season, with online purchases expected to be up 8% to 10%, while overall retail is forecast to grow by 2.5% to 3.5%.
This year, for the first time, the majority of online purchases were made on phones and other mobile devices, according to Adobe Analytics, which tracks e-commerce sales.
On Cyber Monday, 57% of online sales, worth $7.6 billion, were made on a mobile device, Adobe reported. That is up 13.3% over the previous year and nearly double what it was in 2019, when only 33% of Cyber Monday sales were made on a mobile device.
Of course, consumers aren’t just buying on their phones— they’re also using them extensively to browse and find information before making purchases. A survey released by social commerce solutions company Bazaarvoice found that 75% of consumers browse online before making purchases in stores, a process known as “webrooming” in the retail industry. A smaller percentage—just under 60%—say they do “showrooming,” or browsing in physical stores before buying online.
The increased use of mobile for both buying and browsing highlights the need for businesses to have mobile stores with easy checkout and browsing interfaces.
Brandon
Isner, Head of Retail Research for commercial real estate advisory
firm Newmark,
said physical retailers are responding to the growth in mobile
shopping by “investing in curbside pickup infrastructure and
seamless click-and-collect systems that integrate mobile convenience
with in-person engagement.”
[Read more: Proven Ways to Fight Retail Theft This Holiday Season Yield Year-Round Business Lessons]
Social media is where retailers will find shoppers
One of the drivers of the surge in mobile shopping is the growing number of brands selling on social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok.
This holiday season showed that consumers are increasingly comfortable click-and-buying while watching social media content.
According to Bazaarvoice, in 2021, over half of consumers, 55%, said they never shopped on social media. This year, that number dropped to 24%. Gen Zers are the biggest shoppers on social, making one to two purchases on social media each month.
The overwhelming majority of shoppers, 86%, said they seek out and engage with creator content on social media before making a purchase decision.
Those numbers show that “to succeed today, brands and retailers must meet their customers wherever they shop—especially on social platforms, where consumer engagement and comfort with purchasing are on the rise,” said Zarina Lam Stanford, Chief Marketing Officer at Bazaarvoice, when releasing the survey results.
During the first part of Cyber Week, the five-day shopping period between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, retailers who used generative AI for customer service saw a 9% higher conversion rate.
AI-powered chatbots will be key to driving sales
Retail forecasters predicted that this would be the first AI-assisted holiday shopping season and that prediction proved true. On Black Friday alone, AI and AI-powered shopping assistants drove $14.1 billion in sales globally according to e-commerce tech company Salesforce.
During the first part of Cyber Week, the five-day shopping period between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, retailers who used generative AI for customer service saw a 9% higher conversion rate.
“For an industry that is often concerned with margins, especially ahead of rising costs in 2025, this percent increase is a game changer,” said Caila Schwartz, Director of Consumer Insights at Salesforce, when releasing the holiday statistics.
By using AI, “retailers are better equipped to serve the needs of their shoppers and drive them to the buy button,” Schwartz said.
Adobe
found that consumers are responding favorably to suggestions from
AI-powered chatbots. Traffic to retail sites from chatbot-offered
links rose 1,800% year-over-year on Black Friday and 1,950% on Cyber
Monday.
[Read more: 5 Marketing Insights to Spur Sales This Holiday Season]
Marketing and messaging also need to be omnichannel
Retailers learned this holiday that omnichannel doesn’t just mean giving shoppers multiple ways to shop. They also need to use multiple ways to reach those customers.
Along with the growth in mobile shopping, mobile messaging surged during the peak holiday periods.
On Black Friday, mobile push notifications jumped 103% year-over-year, with more marketers using mobile apps to engage shoppers, according to Bloomreach, an e-commerce personalization company used by 1,400-plus brands.
Text messages were up 45% on Black Friday and 47% on Cyber Monday. Email recommendations were up 7% on Black Friday and 35% on Cyber Monday.
Brands increasingly must use multiple ways to reach shoppers as they make purchase decisions via push notifications about sales and product recommendations with more engaging messages, said Roxy Couse, Director of Community and Content Marketing at Bloomreach.
“We know that it takes multiple touchpoints sometimes to drive a conversion,” and convince a customer to make a purchase, Couse said.
The goal for brands is “connecting the whole experience, from your marketing emails to texts, to ads, to onsite browsing,” she said.
“In 2025 and beyond, I can see that really coming together, so you’re using your customer data and your product data to connect those dots and also keeping the customer top of mind in that whole experience.”
Customers will continue to seek value, but with a premium, quality component
During the holiday season, consumers showed that, although they are concerned about prices, they still are willing to spend, especially if they feel they are getting something of value.
“I think we saw both financially stressed consumers and consumers willing to spend. And sometimes from the same consumers at the same time,” said Nikki Baird, Vice President of Strategy and Product at Aptos, a retail technology company.
In some cases, the value lies in a great deal. In others, value lies in a quality or premium product at a fair price. Loyalty points and cash back rewards also figure into the value equation.
That search for value is expected to continue to be uppermost on consumers’ minds in 2025, as shoppers worry about possible price increases.
Baird said the possibility of added costs due to proposed tariffs “could have far more impact on the future of consumer spending than any holiday trend.”
Going forward, Baird said, “a focus on value proposition and customer experience is going to be what it takes to win” in 2025.
Mehmet Altug, who specializes in retail operations as an Associate Professor of Operations Management at the Costello College of Business at George Mason University, believes this cost-conscious mindset means “retailers need to be super-competitive with their prices and come up with marketing campaigns that emphasize how consumers would benefit from their products.”
Retailers also need to understand what purchases consumers place the most value on and “prioritize certain product categories over others and focus their marketing and sales efforts on those,” Altug said.
Barbara Thau also contributed to this article.
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