InMarket Traffic Report Illustrates Omnichannel Holiday Season

Supply chain concerns were top of mind for everyone during the 2021 holiday shopping season. A new Q4 2021 retail foot traffic report from InMarket shows how these concerns shaped how, when, and where consumers did their holiday shopping last season.

Pandemic-related supply chain disruptions were a big source of concern last holiday season. Consumers feared that desired goods would not be available. Or if they were, they would not arrive in time for the holidays.

InMarket’s Q4 survey (it does one each quarter) uses its permission-based location data sets to analyze shopping patterns across the retail landscape. This includes everything from convenience stores to big-box retail to department stores.

An Unusual Holiday Season

Here are some key findings from the Q4 Foot Traffic Report.

Black Tuesday. Concerns over the supply chain issues led many retailers to move up their Black Friday promotions. They wanted to get consumers into the stores earlier. BigBox retailers, in particular, saw a big early in-store traffic surge. This began around November 20.

Omnichannel Impact. InMarket speculates that omnichannel shopping was another factor in the unusually high pre-Black Friday traffic. From the report

“Visits to Big Boxes may have also been further bolstered by shoppers swinging by the day before Thanksgiving (11/25) to pick up their items. While the Big Box category achieved its highest foot traffic the actual day of Black Friday (11/26), it wasn’t quite as pronounced as pre-pandemic performance. Suggesting that consumers were still likely relying on a healthy mix of omnichannel shopping methods such as BOPIS, curbside pickup, and delivery rather than solely in-store shopping.”

Just Buy Them a Gift Card. So 2021 was a banner year for gift card shopping. And supply chain concerns seem to play a big role. InMarket noted the modest in-store foot traffic leading up to Christmas compared with pre-pandemic years.

“This steady but modest increase may have been attributed to consumers favoring purchasing gift cards in lieu of traditional gifts and rising fears related to the unknown effects of the new COVID-19 Omicron variant. InMarket’s research found that the average spend per device on gift cards was up 7.7% in 2021 vs. 2020, and up 24.2% in 2021 vs. 2019. Additionally, unique purchasers of gift cards were up 124.3% in 2021 vs. 2019.”

It makes sense to us that consumers would turn to gift cards in an environment where supply distributions limited the selection of goods. And it also created anxiety over whether goods ordered online would arrive in time for Christmas.

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