Signal Report 3:The Holiday Shopper
Shoppers said they would pull back. Holiday sales grew 3.1% to a record $972 billion. Four shopper types explain who is already spending, and most brands are courting them with the same two plays.
Five chapters, four shoppers
Which consumers are already spending for the holidays, and how are brands trying to win their dollars?
The say-do gap
Shoppers said they would pull back in 2025. Deloitte recorded its most negative outlook since 1997, and holiday sales still grew 3.1%.
How brands show up
One hundred retailer and brand homepages on five dates. Gift hubs and urgency lead for 73 of them. Price proof ran on 34% at BFCM 2025.
Four shopper types
The Curator, the Haul Hunter, the Price Auditor, and the Splurger. The Price Auditor accounts for 71% of shopper conversation, and a fifth group is sitting the season out.
Trends in the headlines
Agentic commerce, social commerce, buy now, pay later, and nostalgia in marketing, checked against each shopper type.
The season ahead
Six on-the-record predictions for Holiday 2026, each graded publicly once the final numbers are in.
How Merciv measured what shoppers did
Future Commerce designed the research questions and wrote the analysis. Merciv supplied the research corpus: shopper conversation, search demand, homepages on five dates, policy pages, and Meta ads, read alongside third-party surveys, forecasts, and transaction sources. Each figure stays tied to its source.
This was one seasonal question, answered once. Merciv connects a brand's internal data and the external world into one cited source of truth, so the next holiday question gets answered the same way.
See how Merciv works39,285
Shopper posts and comments. Cleaned from 87,521 records on Reddit, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and X, October 3 to November 2, 2026
2,706
Meta ads. Active ads across 94 brands on October 16, 2026
100
Retailers and brands. 500 homepage captures on five dates from October 2025 to October 2026, plus policy pages
About Future Commerce
Future Commerce is a media and research company covering the intersection of commerce and culture. Through essays, podcasts, and Signal reports, they help brand, insights, and commerce leaders see where consumer behavior is heading before it becomes obvious.
The Holiday Shopper is part of the Signal series — deep, forward-looking reads on the shifts reshaping how people buy.
Also in the series: Celebrity BrandsCulture, commerce, and how people actually buy
Weekly conversations with commerce operators
Forward-looking research on category shifts
They said they'd spend less.They spent more.
Four shopper types explain who is already in market, and why gift hubs and countdown timers are not a plan for all of them.
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