The Holidays Are Coming

Brandwatch Bulletin #07: The Holidays Are Coming

Christmas is already on a lot of people's minds.

28 September 2020

Welcome to a brand new week! Today we’ve been investigating how people are planning for the holiday season. For many (including us), it can’t come soon enough.

Let’s get to it.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Pretty much everyone has had a nightmare before Christmas this year, and it’s not surprising that people are in a rush to get the festive bells chiming.

When we looked at mentions of the holiday season since the outbreak of Covid-19, we found that consumers have been very busy planning their festivities. Some have even begun shopping.

Comparing the period between March 1 and September 28 2020 with the same timeframe in 2019, there have been 23% more mentions of Christmas and the Holidays on social media this year.

What’s driving such early holiday mentions?

In short, it’s Covid-19.

Over the last six months, we found 1m mentions of Covid-19’s effects on the holiday season and 851k specifically on how it will impact family visits in the festive period.

Many talked about how they are preparing in advance this year. We also noted that lots of people want to make the most of their seasonal purchasing power.

There have been 576k mentions of holiday shopping through independent and small stores in the last six months. People are making and asking for recommendations much earlier in 2020 than in prior years, with lots of discussion about how small, independent, and local businesses have taken a big hit because of the pandemic.

We also found that safety in-store during the busiest retail months was a key concern for some folks. In the last six months there have been 188k mentions of beginning holiday shopping early to avoid the crowds towards the end of the year.

Savings all the way

Another likely reason why people are planning for the holidays so early this year is to spread the cost.

We used Brandwatch Qriously to ask 3,826 respondents from Australia, China, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK, and the US about their spending plans for the 2020 holidays.

We found that the majority (54%) of respondents plan to spend less this year than they did last year. Meanwhile, 36% expect to spend around the same and just 10% say that they plan to spend more.

People are looking forward to spending more time with family over the festive season after an incredibly tough year. Retailers should expect festive shoppers early and be careful about assuming there will be any kind of shopping boom (either online or in-store) later in the year.

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Thanks for reading

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Stay safe,

Brandwatch React