Ninety-four percent of Canadian shoppers will use a smartphone or tablet when holiday shopping this year, and almost two and five plan to use their mobile device to make a purchase.
That’s just one of the insights from a new holiday shopper study exploring how Canadian expects to shop and how much they plan to spend during one of the busiest shopping seasons of the year. A number of Canadians are using their laptops, desktops, mobile devices and tablets for various shopping tasks beyond making a purchase, including finding coupons, managing wishlists, reading reviews and comparing prices.
The study, by marketing intelligence company MiQ and based on a survey of 200 respondents in August 2019, finds that Canadians plan to begin shopping for the holidays around the same time as Americans, despite celebrating Thanksgiving nearly a month earlier. The peak shopping period is expected to begin in November and run through December, with 77% of respondents still anticipating having some buying to do during the final month of the year. Fourteen percent of Canadians expected to begin shopping in September (with only 4% planning to finish that month), while 11% and 8% hoping to finish during October and November, respectively.
Roughly four out of five Canadians plan to shop on Black Friday, Cyber Monday or Boxing Day this year, and 51% plan to shop during all three. Overall, 13% of Canadians believe they will spend more than $1,000 on shopping over the course of the season, with clothing and apparel account for around $200 of their spend as the most-shopped for categories. Only one in five anticipate buying furniture or appliances, for which they will pay out a total of $500 or more.
In the end, MiQ finds that 66% of Canadians plan to spend around the same in 2019 as they did last year. Moreover, the proportion of consumers expecting to spend more (19%) or less (15%) than the previous year is about the same as in 2018. MiQ speculates that this has likely to do with consumers’ perception of their financial situation, as 56% indicate being in a similar financial situation as last year.
Source: 2019 Holiday Shopping Study, MiQ.
