Though three-quarters of consumers expect to spend more this holiday shopping season than in 2024, based on the findings of the Optimove Insights 2025 Consumer Holiday Retail Shopping Survey, they are expected to be more judicious with their purchases, reflecting concerns about inflation and tariffs.

The survey found that 80% of shoppers are concerned about inflation, and 84% are worried about tariffs affecting prices. Another consideration is that consumers’ top spending concerns include rising prices on essentials (28%) and increased lifestyle costs (20%).

Even though the majority of consumers will spend more this year, tariffs and other factors contributing to inflation will mean that their additional spending may not translate into more products and services purchased. In fact, they may actually wind up buying less this year even though they are spending more.

Other price-related survey findings:

• Price is the top priority for consumers this year, with 64% saying price matters more than service, and 81% naming price as their primary factor
• 84% check online prices while shopping in-store, and 44% do this very often
• 81% plan to buy gift cards, favoring Amazon (82%), Walmart (39%), and Target (33%)
• 66% are willing to pay more for eco-friendly products, and 51% prefer brands committed to sustainability

With the implementation of tariffs, the National Retail Federation expects PCE inflation during 2025 to remain at the current level of about 2.5%. Overall, household balance sheets appear to be in good shape. Delinquencies on auto loans and credit card payments have risen but remain in line with the pre-pandemic trend. The consumer credit picture should remain healthy as long as the labor market remains solid.

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Focus on Value

With this in mind, marketers can create successful marketing campaigns by focusing on the customer’s journey.

While the majority of 2025 shoppers will be price/value motivated, that is not the case for all. And there will be differences even among those that prioritize price/value. Some will continue to be brand loyal, even if another brand offers a better price.

Optimove is recognized for its AI-driven decisioning, prescriptive insights, and proven ability to orchestrate thousands of personalized campaigns in real time across channels. Optimove can enable brands to understand which shoppers are the most price sensitive, when brand loyalty (or another factor) continues to matter most, and when price considerations have taken a priority position over brand loyalty.

Optimove’s Postionless Marketing Platform includes Optimove Engage and Orchestrate for cross-channel campaign decisioning and orchestration; Optimove Personalize, a digital personalization engine; and Optimove Gamify, a loyalty and gamification platform.

Positionless Marketing provides every marketer with the power to execute any marketing task instantly and independently and empowers marketers with the following transformative powers:

• Data Power enables anyone to immediately discover customer insights for precise targeting and hyper-personalization—without waiting for engineers
• Creative Power lets anyone instantly create channel-ready assets like copy and visuals—without waiting for creatives
• Optimization Power enables anyone to run campaigns that optimize themselves through automated journeys and testing—without waiting for analysts

By liberating marketing teams from dependencies, they are more empowered, get more done, and are able to deliver the most personalized campaigns at scale achieving better marketing ROI.

With Optimove’s Positionless Marketing, any marketer is independent to use its comprehensive AI-powered suite in optimizing workflows from Insight to Creation and through Optimization.

This level of independence enables marketers to respond instantly to shifting consumer behaviors… whether it’s pushing an early offer, personalizing a message based on purchasing history and lifestyle data, or scaling communications up or down to avoid marketing fatigue by matching messaging frequency to customer preferences.

Brands that act instantly by personalizing timely marketing messages and campaigns as consumer behaviors evolve, will provide the winning ROI combination for the 2025 Holiday shopping season.

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