Simon-Kucher today published the eighth edition of its Holiday Shopping Study, in which the average US household expects to spend $1,018 on the season - 5.5% below last year and level with 2024, according to the consultancy. The survey of 1,501 consumers, fielded from August 6 to August 20, 2026, also records a steep fall in the share of shoppers who say advertised discounts fully reflect true savings, and a gap between widespread use of AI for research and reluctance to let it complete a purchase.

In Short

Simon-Kucher, a consulting firm, asked about 1,500 Americans in August what they plan to spend on the holidays, and the average household answered $1,018, which is 5.5% less than last year. That matters to anyone who sells or advertises in the fourth quarter, because the same shoppers are starting earlier, waiting for sales, less sure that advertised discounts reflect real savings and turning to AI tools and TikTok to find bargains. According to Simon-Kucher, the retailers that win will be the ones offering trusted prices, service and loyalty rather than the loudest discounts.

A $1,018 baseline and a squeeze that splits by income

According to Simon-Kucher, the average US household expects to spend $1,018 on holiday expenses in 2026, which the consultancy describes as a return to 2024 levels. A 5.5% decline to $1,018 implies roughly $1,077 for last year, by PPC Land's arithmetic. The release draws a conclusion for the sector from the drop: "any retail revenue growth will likely come from higher prices, rather than more purchases." That is Simon-Kucher's inference. The survey asks households what they expect to spend, not retailers what they expect to sell.

The squeeze is uneven. Households earning $200,000 or more expect to spend $2,012, about 3% below the 2025 forecast, and the release calls higher-income households "the spending anchors." The larger pullbacks sit in the middle of the distribution. Homes earning $150,000 to $199,999 expect $1,464, down $529; the $100,000 to $149,999 band expects $1,142, down $301; the $75,000 to $99,999 band expects $883, down $190; and the $50,000 to $74,999 band lands at $835, down $44. At the lower end, households under $25,000 expect $387, down $41, and those between $25,000 and $49,999 expect $589, down $26. One of the study's slide headlines says "middle-income households are making the largest sacrifices." The dollar changes are labelled as against the 2025 forecast, not against recorded 2025 spending.

Shikha Jain, Partner and Head of Consumer North America at Simon-Kucher, frames the result as a reset rather than a retreat: "Holiday budgets are being reset, not abandoned." She ties the pattern to prices and debt. "High fuel costs and inflation have made consumers far more focused on value and deals," she said. "For lower and middle-income households, financial fragility is growing." Those households, she added, are "choosing between record debt and everyday essentials." In the survey, 77% say inflation has changed how they shop, and 48% describe the economy as in poor shape (31%) or very poor shape (17%). Among households under $75,000, 36% expect to spend less on discretionary items over the next 12 months, against 29% in the $75,000 to $200,000 group and 28% above $200,000.

Simon-Kucher's backdrop slide leans on third-party data that was not independently verified for this article. It cites consumer prices up 3.4% year on year in August, tariff policy adding an estimated $1,100 a year per household, gasoline at $4.12 a gallon against $3.25 in March, credit card debt up about 4.5% to $1.26 trillion, University of Michigan sentiment at 51.7 (roughly 11% below a year earlier) and real average hourly earnings down 0.2% year on year in July, drawing on the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Yale Budget Lab, AAA, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and others. The consultancy frames the result as a K-shaped economy, in which lower-income households increasingly borrow to fund spending, and notes that the top 10% account for more than 45% of consumer spending.

Other trackers use other units. The National Retail Federation's 2025 survey put planned spending at $890.49 per person, the second-highest in its 23-year history, a per-person figure that cannot be set beside Simon-Kucher's per-household average.

By category, the study measures the share of shoppers planning to spend more than $100. Large household appliances and trips and vacations each reach 72%, electronics 70% and experiences 59%, against 30% for everyday essentials and 19% for pet food and accessories. Trips, electronics, experiences, fashion and toys rose against 2025, according to the study's arrows, while beauty, services and subscriptions, video games and pet food fell. On payment, 68% plan to use cash on hand (a group that includes debit), 52% credit, 34% savings and 16% borrowing, of which buy now pay later accounts for 10%.

Earlier starts and longer waits

Timing has shifted as much as totals. According to Simon-Kucher, 62% are shopping earlier to spread out costs. In its timing chart, 16% had already started, 8% plan to begin in August, 15% in September, 27% in October, 30% in November and 4% in December, so about two-thirds will have begun by the end of October, by PPC Land's arithmetic. A Wunderkind survey of 324 US consumers collected on October 27 and 28, 2025 found 34% had begun in October or earlier; the samples and questions differ, so the two do not form a trend.

Price pressure is changing behavior in several directions at once. Waiting for deals and discounts is the most common response, at 57%. Behind it come shorter shopping lists (31%), earlier purchases to avoid higher prices (30%), a change of stores (28%), a switch to private label (24%) and more locally sourced goods (18%). Half are choosing lower-priced value brands, while 56% will spend extra to maintain holiday traditions.

Deal-hunting habits vary by cohort. Millennials (48%) and Gen X (45%) are the most active coupon hunters, against 30% for both Gen Z and Baby Boomers. Among Boomers, 83% cut spending by buying items already on sale, compared with 51% of Gen Z.

Flash sales divide opinion. Just over half of respondents (52%) enjoy them, including 61% of Millennials and 59% of Gen Z, against 49% of Gen X and 40% of Boomers, while 28% opt out. That group includes 15% who feel pressured into a quick purchase and 8% who abandon a cart when the final price or countdown pressure appears. The survey defined the format as offers available for a short window, such as an hour, or ending quickly because of low-stock messaging.

Perceptions of where the best deals sit are also moving. Black Friday remains the anchor at 52%, down from 60% in 2025 and 72% in 2023. Amazon Prime Day is named by 9%, against 11% a year earlier and 30% in 2022, and Cyber Monday by 15%. Simon-Kucher reads the 2025 swing toward Black Friday as temporary. The Prime Day figure sits beside CommerceIQ data on the June 23-26 event, in which total ordered revenue ended 1.7% below the 2025 event while product page traffic fell 10.3% and unit conversion rose 17.1%; brands cut ad spend 8.8%.

Discount credibility becomes the contested variable

Expectations for discount depth have cooled. In the study, 59% expect discounts of up to 25% (62% in 2025), 23% expect 26% to 40%, and 15% expect more than 40%, compared with 42% at the 2020 peak. The release says "Deep discounts of 40% have long passed" and that "Shoppers commonly accept savings between 15% and 25%." The study's own bands run from 10% to 25%, not 15% to 25%.

Credibility has weakened faster than depth. Asked how accurately advertised discounts compare with regular prices, 22% say they fully reflect true savings, down from 46% in 2025. A further 45% say they mostly do, up from 25%. Another 25% say they only partially do because original prices are often inflated (23% a year earlier), 4% say they rarely do (3%), and 4% are not sure (2%). Adding the first two rows gives 67% for 2026 against 71% for 2025, by PPC Land's arithmetic, which means much of the headline drop is a move from "fully" to "mostly" rather than a collapse in belief. The release words the 22% as shoppers who "believe advertised discounts reflect true savings," without the qualifier "fully." Gen Z and Millennials are the likeliest to say discounts fully reflect savings (25% each) and Boomers the least (18%).

Max Walter, Director, Consumer North America, puts it this way: "Consumers aren't pulling back from the holidays, they're shopping early and buying with greater intention. They're trading down where it makes sense, leaning into promotions, and less willing to take discounts at face value."

The study draws a commercial reading. It says "Deeper discounts do not automatically mean stronger value perception," and that this gives retailers "room to protect price and margin" depending on their brand price positioning. Both statements are Simon-Kucher's interpretation of survey answers about expectations, not observations of sales results, and Simon-Kucher describes itself, in the same release, as a consultancy specializing in commercial growth and pricing.

Regulators have been policing the same mechanisms. Amazon tightened its List Price and Typical Price rules, with changes taking effect on April 23 and May 18, 2026, requiring sellers to back reference prices with real sales data or external retailer evidence. Australia's Federal Court ordered two Emma Sleep entities to pay a combined A$15 million in penalties on April 24, 2026 over countdown timers that reset and false strikethrough prices on 74 products. The ACCC said on September 21, 2026 that digiDirect had paid A$99,000 over strikethrough claims spotted in a Black Friday sweep. In that setting, the study's remark that shoppers are growing more skeptical of reference prices lands on a pricing practice already under scrutiny.

AI: broad use for research, narrow use for purchasing

AI is now part of the holiday toolkit for just over half of shoppers. In the study, 55% plan to use it for holiday shopping, one point more than last year, with adoption at 71% among Gen Z, 67% among Millennials, 50% among Gen X and 36% among Boomers.

Among those users (a base of 828), the leading tasks are finding prices and deals (55%) and comparing products (51%), followed by discovering gift ideas (37%), planning when and where to shop (30%) and staying within budget (29%). Only 16% would let AI make the purchase, rising to 22% of Millennials and 20% of Gen Z but falling to 11% of Gen X and 6% of Boomers. Older users who do use AI lean hardest on research: 63% of Boomers use it to find deals, against 46% of Gen Z. Because these shares are measured among AI users, PPC Land's arithmetic puts deal-finding at roughly 30% of all respondents and AI-completed purchases at about 9%. The release lists the 55%, 51% and 16% figures without stating the base.

Concerns center on control. Preference for making holiday decisions alone is cited by 29%, and 23% enjoy discovering gifts themselves. On privacy, 25% do not trust AI with personal information. On quality, 21% do not trust the recommendations and 18% think AI would put the retailer's interests above theirs; 14% worry it could charge the wrong amount. Jain describes the shift as AI "moving from curiosity to a practical shopping assistant simplifying jobs that matter most right now: finding the best deals on budget and product discovery."

Trust, and who holds it

Trust is broad but shallow. In the survey, 23% call AI extremely trustworthy for holiday shopping, 24% significantly and 29% somewhat, which sums to the 76% in the release; 14% say a little and 10% not at all. The top two boxes together reach 47%. On providers, about 77% of respondents placed ChatGPT among their top five and 40% of those ranked it first, according to the study. Gemini plots second on the chart, and the study calls Alexa the strongest second-tier provider, with Siri and Apple AI, Copilot, Walmart's Sparky, Claude and Grok further back. Amazon, whose Alexa sits in that second tier on the chart, merged Rufus and Alexa+ into Alexa for Shopping on May 13, 2026, combining a dedicated shopping assistant with its voice assistant.

Other surveys land elsewhere because they ask different people. Optimove found 72% of surveyed US consumers consult ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini for gift ideas, but its sample was drawn from households earning $75,000 or more. A 2025 survey of 2,000 weekly AI users put the share planning to use AI for holiday purchases at 83%, a sample defined by its AI use. Adobe expects traffic from AI chat and browser services to US retail sites to rise 130% over the season, though the base behind that percentage is not disclosed.

The 16% willing to delegate a purchase is the figure to set against product plans. Google deployed agentic checkout on November 13, 2025, a feature that buys tracked items on a shopper's behalf when prices drop, so tooling for AI-completed purchases already exists in a mainstream shopping surface, while the survey suggests consumer comfort lags behind it.

Social commerce: TikTok Shop and its LIVE format

The study's fifth theme is the rise of social commerce. TikTok Shop reaches 36% of respondents, defined as people familiar with the platform who use it (a base of 534). Nearly half of those users, 47%, have shopped Black Friday or Cyber Monday sales there, and 76% of those event shoppers say it offers better drops, deals and exclusives than other social platforms. Seven in ten say they discover products they would otherwise not have found, two in three say its content inspires them to purchase, and two in three view it as a new digital "shopping mall." The study itself labels TikTok Shop "a smaller channel," one whose engagement spikes around major deal events.

TikTok Shop LIVE, the livestream format, draws the headline number. In the study, 25% of TikTok Shop users say they are very likely and 35% somewhat likely to shop LIVE this season, which makes 60%. By household income the two top answers sum to 55% below $75,000, 68% from $75,000 to $200,000 and 62% above $200,000, by PPC Land's arithmetic. Stated likelihood is not behavior, and the base is a self-selected group of users. Walter frames the format as a change in how purchases are made: "TikTok Shop is blurring the line between entertainment and retail." He adds that "Discovery, urgency, and purchases happen in the same feed."

Data on trust supplies a counterweight. A BrandShield survey of 1,029 US adults placed TikTok Shop ahead of eBay, Craigslist, Etsy and Poshmark as the platform most often named for a scam or counterfeit purchase, at 34.7%. The populations and questions differ, so the two sets of figures do not contradict each other, but both bear on how much confidence shoppers place in checkout inside a social feed. Adobe's forecast adds a revenue-side signal: it expects the share of holiday revenue credited to social media to rise 17%, against 4% for paid search.

What the data means for advertisers and retailers

For the marketing community, the study's value lies in the tension between falling household budgets and rising holiday media plans. On the supply side, Tatari survey data circulated by the Video Advertising Bureau found that 24 of 41 direct-to-consumer brands plan to raise television spending for the Thanksgiving-weekend sales above 2025 levels, and eight of 40 named large language model platforms among priority channels. That is a sample of 41 clients of one TV buyer. Adobe forecasts US online holiday spending of $275.1 billion between November 1 and December 31, up 6.7%, with Cyber Monday at $15.1 billion. Those forecasts measure online transactions; Simon-Kucher measures household budgets across categories that include trips, services and in-store purchases. Optimove's higher-income sample also found 55% expecting to spend more than last year, while Simon-Kucher's $75,000 to $99,999 band sits $190 below the 2025 forecast. The sources are not measuring the same thing, and the gap between them says as much about who is asked as about the season.

Simon-Kucher's own action list for businesses has five parts: protecting share of wallet rather than relying on category growth; responding to uneven pressure with entry-priced items or reduced formats; making value easier to recognize through transparent, verifiable discounts and promotion calendars built around earlier shopping; treating AI as a discovery channel alongside search, retail media networks and marketplaces, with product content that AI tools can interpret; and turning social engagement into direct commerce, including through TikTok Shop LIVE and creators. A seven-item checklist for retailers covers segmentation, channel visibility, experience, calendar design, consumer trust, generative engine optimization and social selling, the last two framed as whether products and deals are discoverable by AI and whether a retailer has a TikTok and social media strategy.

Jain's closing statement in the release addresses who wins: "The retailers that win won't necessarily be the loudest discounters. They will be the ones that look beyond what consumers plan to spend and understand how and where they make purchase decisions." She adds that they "will move past product assortment, price, and promotion, and seek other ways to provide value such as service and loyalty to drive traffic this holiday season."

The peak events that will test these answers arrive in late November, with Cyber Monday falling on November 30, 2026.

Where the figures need care

Several numbers in the two documents do not line up, or carry caveats worth stating plainly.

Sample. The release describes a survey of 1,500 US adults; the study describes 1,501 consumers surveyed between August 6 and August 20, 2026. The methodology says holiday spend per household was analyzed against the US income distribution published in Census table HINC-06, using both stated dollar amounts and percentage changes, and that 5% was then excluded at each end to focus on the median 90%. It does not say whether the non-spending shares were treated the same way.

Baselines. The $1,018 headline and the 5.5% decline come from a question about last year's and this year's spending. The by-income changes are labelled against the 2025 forecast. As a rough check, weighting the seven income bands by the sample mix printed in the methodology gives an average near $1,056 and an average gap to the 2025 forecast of about 14%, well above 5.5%. The materials do not reconcile the two, and the weighting is PPC Land's approximation. The study also says its projections "closely aligned with findings from other major, reputable sources," including a roughly 5.5% year-on-year decline, without naming those sources.

Release wording. The release says 30% of Gen X are active coupon hunters; the study's chart shows 45% for Gen X, with 30% belonging to Gen Z and Baby Boomers. It describes the 72% for trips and appliances as among the largest holiday spending categories, whereas the study's measure is the share of shoppers planning to spend more than $100 in each category. It also gives the 76% for better TikTok Shop offers as a share of "TikTok shoppers," while the study applies it only to those who shopped peak sales on the platform, a subset of the 534 users.

Source. All findings are Simon-Kucher's own survey results. Simon-Kucher says in its release that the study "compares consumer expectations with industry projections," but neither document lists those projections.

Timeline

  • October 16, 2025: the National Retail Federation puts planned 2025 holiday spending at $890.49 per person.
  • October 27-28, 2025: Wunderkind surveys 324 US consumers and finds 34% started holiday shopping in October or earlier.
  • November 13, 2025: Google deploys agentic checkout, store-calling AI and conversational shopping across Search and the Gemini app for US holiday shoppers.
  • April 23 and May 18, 2026: Amazon's tightened List Price and Typical Price rules take effect.
  • April 24, 2026: Australia's Federal Court orders two Emma Sleep entities to pay a combined A$15 million in penalties.
  • May 13, 2026: Amazon merges Rufus and Alexa+ into Alexa for Shopping.
  • June 23-26, 2026: Prime Day runs in the US; CommerceIQ later measures ad spend down 8.8% and unit conversion up 17.1%.
  • July 13-24, 2026: Tatari surveys 41 direct-to-consumer brands; results circulate on September 23, 2026.
  • August 5, 2026: Optimove publishes its Holiday Shopping Report 2026, finding 72% consult AI assistants for gift ideas.
  • August 6-20, 2026: Simon-Kucher fields its survey of 1,501 US consumers.
  • September 9, 2026: BrandShield publishes a 1,029-adult survey naming TikTok Shop most often for marketplace fraud.
  • September 21, 2026: the ACCC says digiDirect paid A$99,000 over misleading strikethrough discounts.
  • September 28, 2026: Adobe forecasts US online holiday spending of $275.1 billion for November and December.
  • October 8, 2026: Simon-Kucher publishes its 8th Annual Holiday Shopping Study and release.
  • November 30, 2026: Cyber Monday, which Adobe forecasts at $15.1 billion.

Summary

Who: Simon-Kucher, a commercial growth and pricing consultancy, through Shikha Jain (Partner and Head of Consumer North America) and Max Walter (Director), surveying 1,501 US consumers.

What: The 8th Annual Holiday Shopping Study finds an average household holiday budget of $1,018, 5.5% lower and back to 2024 levels; a steep drop in the share who say advertised discounts fully reflect true savings (22%, from 46%); AI use by 55% of shoppers but only 16% of those users willing to let it complete a purchase; and 60% of TikTok Shop users likely to shop TikTok Shop LIVE.

When: Published today; the survey ran from August 6 to August 20, 2026, ahead of the November-December holiday season.

Where: The United States, with findings distributed through a Business Wire release from Boston.

Why: Simon-Kucher attributes the reset to inflation, high fuel costs, tariffs and household debt, with lower- and middle-income households under the most strain, and argues that retailers will compete on trusted value, AI discoverability and social commerce rather than deeper discounts.