Despite being a season filled with cheer and merriment, more than half of Americans say they are stressed (54%) about holiday shopping, and only a third (32%) of Americans say they find holiday gift shopping to be a joyful experience, according to a new survey commissioned by PayPal.
But it’s not all bah-humbug during the holidays! In our 2017
Holiday Money Habits Study* of consumers in the U.S., we found some unexpected trends about how we plan to shop during the holidays. Not only are mobile devices making shopping easier than ever, but where we shop and who we shop for continues to shift.
Gifts for Friends, Family and….Fido?
How Americans prioritized their gift lists added even more intrigue. While almost every respondent expected to buy gifts for friends, family, and significant others, pets are clearly hot right now. Americans, on average, will spend more on gifts for their pets ($85) than their friends ($80), and that group isn’t in the minority: two-thirds of Americans (67%) plan to gift shop for their pet.
Every generation surveyed plans to spend the most on their significant others – more than $230, on average – though Millennials will spend the most on their children. Millennials also plan to spend over $100 more than Young Boomers on total gifts this year – $657 compared to $546.
If you’re one of the 33% of Americans that plan to pool funds with others in order to buy someone a holiday gift this season, PayPal’s new
Money Pools feature is a free and simple way to collect and keep track of money for group gifts and holiday travel within your PayPal account. Money Pools are a more personalized and organized way to collect money with family and friends while also easing the burden of someone having to front the money or chase people to pay you back. Creating a Money Pool is simple:
- Log in to your PayPal account on web or mobile web and click “Your Pools” along left side of the account homepage.
- Follow the prompts to personalize your pool with details on what gift you’re collecting for, the monetary goal and when you’ll need the funds. You can also customize your pool by adding a cover photo and selecting whether names and contribution amounts are public or private in your pool’s activity feed.
- Once you create your Money Pool, share the link with your fellow PayPal gift givers via text, e-mail, Facebook or Twitter to start collecting. If your friends or family don’t already have a PayPal account, they can easily open one for free. All of the contributions are tracked in the pool’s activity feed and go straight to your PayPal account to spend when you’re ready.
Shopping wherever and whenever we want
Thanks to convenience and flexibility, mobile shopping continues to rise at an amazing rate. Four in five respondents (80%) plan to shop from their mobile phones this holiday season, with half (50%) doing it because a mobile device allows them the flexibility to shop wherever they are.
Another third of Americans say they prefer to shop from their mobile devices because it lets them act when inspiration strikes. But where inspiration strikes continues to fascinate us! Even more so than last year, consummate multitaskers are purchasing gifts online from unexpected locations:
- Almost half of all Americans (46%) expect to shop from the toilet, up from 22% in 2016.
- Another 42% will shop from the office, up a whopping 33% from last year.
- Stealth shopping is also on the rise: 49% of Americans will make purchases in bed for their partners while they sleep next to them, up from 34% last year.
- Shopping at the dinner table increased to 22%, up from 14% in 2017
- Only about 5% of you admitted to shopping while driving.
With all this mobile multitasking, retailers are still at risk of missing out on younger shoppers, specifically Millennials (Age 21-36) and Gen X (Age 37 -52), if they haven’t optimized their mobile shopping experience. More than one-quarter of Millennial (29.7%) and Gen X (29.8%) shoppers find most retail websites are not optimized for mobile, and more than two-thirds of Americans (37%) hate punching in all their data.
Entering personal data repeatedly can increase the risk of errors and fraud. Thanks to innovations like
One Touch™, shoppers can remain logged in to check out faster across millions of eligible merchants. PayPal can also protect your eligible purchases. If an eligible item that you’ve bought online doesn’t arrive, or doesn’t exactly match the seller’s description, our
Buyer Protection* can reimburse you for the full purchase price of the item plus original shipping costs. And if something arrives that doesn’t fit as expected,
Return shipping is on us** on eligible purchases. Looking for deals? PayPal’s
Shopping Hub pulls together some of the best holiday shopping deals.
The rise in mobile shopping means that Americans are fitting more shopping into less time. Amazingly, shoppers expect to spend similar amounts of time shopping in brick and mortar stores (2 hours, 48 minutes), on a laptop or desktop computer (3 hours), and on a mobile device (2 hours, 30 minutes).
This holiday season, all of us at PayPal are encouraging you to embrace the freedom and flexibility of mobile shopping, using PayPal, so that whenever inspiration strikes you can truly Seize the Season.
What’s Next?
Technology continues to transform the shopping experience, and the future of shopping is in for some big changes in the coming years.
Over one-quarter of Americans (28%) would consider making purchases from futuristic new contexts at some point over the next five years, including autonomous vehicles (30%), drones (29%), voice-controlled devices (27%), and through virtual reality (26%).
Already today, more than one-quarter (28%) of Americans report making purchases directly from social media, a sign to retailers that the right shopping hooks on sites like Facebook and Pinterest could lead you to more than a fifth of shoppers.
Giving Back
Americans are looking towards the holidays as a time for giving back even amidst a tough year of natural disasters that caused crisis across the nation’s communities. And it’s no surprise that they are choosing humanitarian relief as their number one cause (45%), with animal welfare (35%) and faith/religion (32%) as other leading causes.
More than half of Americans (53%) say they will make a donation this year, and of the Americans who plan to donate, 44% will donate on #GivingTuesday. Notably, of those who are planning on donating, 93% say they will donate the same amount or more than they did last year.
If you are looking for a charity to support, check out the
PayPal Giving Fund. There are thousands of charities listed, so whether you want to support a charity in your community or a cause overseas, you will find a cause you love. And, starting on #GivingTuesday, November 28, 2017 through Sunday, December 31, PayPal will add 1% to every donation made to the PayPal Giving Fund in support of charities. Terms apply.
However, and wherever you shop, we hope you and your loved ones have an amazing holiday season!
*Terms and Limitations apply.
** Limitations apply. This is an exclusive offer offered to eligible PayPal account owners. With this service you are eligible to receive up to 12 refunds per calendar year (between January 1st and December 31st), and may receive refunds of up to $30 USD per claim. PayPal reserves the right to cancel or modify part of or this entire Offer at any time without notice, for any reason in their sole discretion. See
full terms and conditions.
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About the Survey*
The survey was commissioned by PayPal and conducted online by independent research company Koski Research in September 2017. The survey polled 1,000 Americans aged 18-55 on their habits of holiday shopping and gift giving.
About Koski Research
Koski Research specializes in custom research solutions that answer the most complex business questions of Fortune 1000 companies. Answers to these questions result in national media coverage, drive business growth and prepare clients for the future. As the creator of the Engagement IQ, a proprietary measurement system that assesses the public’s sentiment of a company based on key social behaviors, Koski Research excels in leveraging research to drive customer engagement.