Optimove this month released its 2026 Summer Shopping Report, a study based on a survey of 648 U.S. consumers conducted in Spring 2026, showing that more than half of respondents plan to spend more on summer purchases this year than they did in 2025. The report, published May 6, 2026, comes from Optimove Insights, the analytical and research arm of Optimove, a marketing technology company incorporated as Mobius Solutions Ltd. and serving over 500 brands globally.

The headline figure is clear. According to the report, 52% of surveyed consumers say their budget for summer shopping will be higher than last year, while 31% expect to spend the same amount. Only 17% say they will spend less. The survey targeted adults aged 18 and over with household incomes of $75,000 or more, covering topics including shopping behaviors, discovery, decision-making, messaging, payments, and multichannel behavior.

Clothing dominates category interest. According to the report, 81% of respondents selected clothing as a purchase priority for the season, followed by swimwear at 50%, beauty and skincare products at 49%, and outdoor gear at 48%. Home goods came in at 45%, travel and hotel accommodations at 32%, and electronics at 26%. The spread across categories indicates that summer spending is not concentrated in a single product type but distributed across both discretionary and functional goods.

Quality leads, price converts

The factors driving purchase decisions reveal a two-stage dynamic. According to the report, quality is the most important factor for 81% of respondents when choosing a brand or product. Price follows at 70%, and brand reputation ranks third at 45%. Discounts or promotions reach only 28%, placing fourth - ahead of convenience (20%), sustainability (18%), trendiness (17%), and recommendations from friends or family (12%).

Yet the role of price becomes more pronounced when looking at conversion rather than consideration. According to the report, 59% of respondents say an item going on an early sale would sometimes and often motivate them to buy, even before they are ready to purchase. That figure breaks down into 59% responding "sometimes and often" versus 37% "sometimes but not often" and just 4% "never." The data suggests that while quality establishes which brands enter the consideration set, price is the mechanism that triggers action.

Price also drives switching behavior. According to the report, better prices are the top motivator for shopping at an unplanned location, cited by 44% of respondents. When it comes to trying a new brand entirely, 80% of respondents point to better prices as a factor - outpacing quality (85%), recommendations from friends or family (55%), and product variety (53%). The practical implication is that consumers entering summer with an optimistic budget are simultaneously attentive to competitive pricing and willing to redirect demand when a better deal appears.

Channel behavior varies sharply by category

The report's channel data complicates the assumption that summer shopping will be primarily digital. According to the report, 59% of consumers plan to buy soft goods - clothing, towels, and similar items - both in-store and online. For skincare and beauty, 50% plan to use both channels. Hard goods such as outdoor patio furniture and grills see 46% planning a combined approach, but 34% of this group prefer in-store only, the strongest in-store preference of any category measured.

Travel stands out at the opposite end. According to the report, 48% of consumers plan to shop for travel and hotel accommodations exclusively online - by far the highest online-only share across all categories. The contrast between travel and hard goods reflects product logic: a service-based booking has no physical validation requirement, whereas a barbecue grill benefits from hands-on inspection before purchase.

This channel split has direct implications for campaign measurement. As covered on PPC Land, only 12% of commerce media networks can seamlessly activate and measure campaigns across onsite, offsite, and in-store environments, despite omnichannel consumer behavior being the norm rather than the exception. The Optimove data reinforces that gap: brands serving hard goods categories face a particularly demanding measurement challenge when the majority of their buyers split a single purchase journey across digital and physical touchpoints.

Shopping starts earlier than the season itself

One of the more structurally significant findings in the report concerns when consumers actually begin their summer purchases. According to the report, 26% of respondents said they started shopping as early as January and February. A further 12% began in March, 20% in April, and 30% plan to begin in May or June. Only 7% indicated they would wait until July and after, and 5% said they would not shop for summer items at all.

The promotional timing data follows a similar early-leaning pattern. According to the report, 27% of consumers want to receive sale notifications from brands at the beginning of the year or earlier. Another 17% want them in March, 24% in April, 15% in May, and 11% in June. Taken together, the data shows that more than 80% of consumers who want promotional communications prefer to receive them before or during May - well ahead of the traditional peak summer window.

This finding echoes a pattern documented across other seasonal shopping periods on PPC Land. In the 2025 holiday season, research showed 34% of consumers began holiday shopping in October or earlier, with tariff concerns accelerating the early-start trend. Summer 2026 appears to be operating under a similar logic of progressive demand, where the season is not a single concentrated moment but a rolling accumulation of intent across multiple months.

The Optimove data also connects to earlier findings from the company's own research calendar. In April 2026, Optimove published its 2026 Mother's Day Shopping Report based on the same 648-consumer survey panel, finding that 49% of respondents regularly use AI tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini for gift recommendations. That report noted 61% of Mother's Day purchases happen one month to two weeks before the occasion and 47% of buyers plan to use both in-store and online channels - a behavioral profile that is consistent with what the Summer Shopping Report now shows for the broader season.

Gartner positioning and company background

According to the report, Optimove has been positioned as a Visionary in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Multichannel Marketing Hubs for two consecutive years, recognized for AI-driven decisioning, prescriptive insights, and the ability to orchestrate personalized campaigns across channels. The company reports that its approach, which it labels Positionless Marketing, has been shown to improve campaign efficiency by 88%, though no independent verification of that figure is provided in the report materials.

Optimove's platform architecture includes Optimove Engage and Orchestrate for cross-channel campaign decisioning and orchestration, Optimove Personalize for digital personalization, and Optimove Gamify for loyalty and gamification. The company says it embedded AI directly into its platform as early as 2012. Optimove is headquartered in Tel Aviv, with a registered London office at 14 Hewett Street, EC2A 3NP. The company reported revenues of approximately $30 million to $40 million in 2023 and 2024.

Optimove is not without regulatory history. In December 2025, France's data protection authority, the Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés, imposed a 1 million euro fine on Optimove for GDPR processor violations connected to a data breach affecting 9.8 million French users via the music streaming platform Deezer. The case concerned the unauthorized retention and copying of non-anonymized user data that occurred in 2019 and was discovered only after Deezer notified French authorities in November 2022. That enforcement context is relevant background for any marketing organization evaluating the company's data infrastructure claims in the context of the Summer Shopping Report.

Why this matters for marketing practitioners

The Summer Shopping Report carries specific relevance for practitioners managing paid search, retail media, and performance marketing campaigns heading into the June-August period.

First, the 52% figure for budget increases among higher-income households - the survey targets those earning $75,000 or more - suggests that demand in the upper consumer tier is expected to hold or grow. This is consistent with broader retail data tracked on PPC Land. Valentine's Day 2026 spending reached a record $29.1 billion, driven by middle- and high-income households expanding gift categories. The same income cohort now signals summer spending confidence.

Second, the early-start timing data changes the campaign calendar calculus. If 26% of target consumers started shopping in January and February, and a further 12% in March, then campaigns launched at the beginning of June are already reaching the tail of the demand curve rather than its peak. The Optimove findings suggest that meaningful budget allocation should have preceded the conventional summer campaign window by several months.

Third, the quality-then-price sequence has implications for how advertisers structure creative messaging and bidding strategy. Upper-funnel exposure that leads with product quality and brand positioning appears better suited to the consideration phase, while price-driven creative - early sale announcements, promotional messaging - functions more effectively at the conversion stage. According to the report, "there is no single factor in winning the consumer." The brands that deliver both quality positioning and timely price signals will address the full purchase journey.

Fourth, the multichannel distribution of purchase intent creates measurement complexity that platforms are still working to resolve. When 59% of soft goods buyers plan to use both in-store and online channels, the standard last-click attribution model applied to a single digital campaign will undercount the contribution of upper-funnel digital touchpoints to physical store conversions. Retail media networks have been grappling with exactly this attribution challenge. Consumer spending data from earlier in 2026 showed that retargeting CPMs surged 18% year-over-year in January and February, a figure AdRoll attributed partly to structural shifts in how advertisers allocate budgets across funnel stages.

Survey methodology

The survey underlying the Summer Shopping Report was conducted in Spring 2026 across 648 U.S. adults aged 18 and over with household incomes of $75,000 or more. According to the report, the analysis used both dedicated questions and related cross-survey data on discovery, decision-making, messaging, payments, and multichannel behavior. The survey is described as producing 10 charts, with findings organized across four thematic sections: consumer optimism and category priorities; quality and price dynamics; multichannel behavior; and the temporal distribution of shopping intent across the calendar.

The household income threshold is a methodological constraint worth noting. Consumers earning below $75,000 per year are excluded from the findings. Given that U.S. retail spending patterns through 2025 showed K-shaped dynamics, with higher-income households sustaining or increasing spending while lower-income groups contracted, the Optimove survey population skews toward the more economically resilient segment. The 52% budget-increase figure should be read in that context: it is not a representative measure of the full U.S. consumer population but of a defined higher-income subset.

Timeline

  • January - February 2026: According to the Optimove 2026 Summer Shopping Report, 26% of consumers surveyed said they had already initiated summer shopping by this period, the earliest documented wave of the season.
  • December 11, 2025: France's CNIL imposed a 1 million euro fine on Optimove for GDPR processor violations affecting 9.8 million French users connected to a Deezer data breach. PPC Land coverage
  • April 23, 2026: Optimove published its 2026 Mother's Day Shopping Report, finding that 49% of 648 surveyed U.S. consumers use AI tools for gift recommendations and 47% plan to shop both in-store and online. PPC Land coverage
  • May 5, 2026: Optimove Media Relations Consultant Michael Paluszek distributed the 2026 Summer Shopping Report to media, with the report reaching PPC Land via email on this date.
  • May 6, 2026: Optimove 2026 Summer Shopping Report published. The report, based on a Spring 2026 survey of 648 U.S. consumers with household incomes of $75,000 or more, finds 52% of respondents plan to increase summer spending compared to 2025.

Summary

Who: Optimove Insights, the research arm of marketing technology company Optimove (incorporated as Mobius Solutions Ltd., headquartered in Tel Aviv), which serves over 500 brands globally. The survey population was 648 U.S. adults aged 18 and over with household incomes of $75,000 or more.

What: The 2026 Summer Shopping Report, a consumer survey covering summer spending intentions, category priorities, the role of quality and price in purchase decisions, channel behavior by product category, and the temporal distribution of shopping activity across the calendar. Key findings include: 52% of respondents plan to spend more than in 2025; 81% prioritize quality; 80% would switch to a new brand for better prices; and 59% plan to buy soft goods both in-store and online.

When: The survey was conducted in Spring 2026. The report was distributed to media on May 5, 2026, and published May 6, 2026.

Where: The survey covers U.S. consumer behavior. Optimove is headquartered in Tel Aviv, with a registered office in London.

Why: The report is relevant to the marketing and advertising community because it provides quantitative data on how a higher-income consumer segment plans to allocate summer spending, which categories will attract the most demand, how channel preferences differ by product type, and how the timing of shopping activity extends well beyond the traditional summer window - all of which affect campaign planning, budget allocation, and measurement strategy for practitioners running search, retail media, and performance marketing programs.

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