The holiday shopping season is officially here, and Offers.com recently conducted our yearly Holiday Shopping Survey 2017 via Ipsos, a worldwide leader in polling and market research, surveying over 1,000 U.S. consumers to discover the consumer shopping trends for the holiday season.

This survey found that Cyber Monday beats out Black Friday in popularity for the second year in a row.

"With online retailers undercutting brick-and-mortar retailers (and the obvious convenience factor), online shopping is becoming increasingly compelling for shoppers. With the convenience of online shopping, shoppers are able to purchase just about anything they can imagine from the comfort of their own home and score the same deals or even better as they would in-store. Our data also shows some interesting trends when it comes to shopping both online and on mobile this holiday season." - Howard Schaffer, GM of Offers.com.

Read on to see the top consumer trends for Black Friday, Cyber Monday and holiday season shopping.

General trends:

Cyber Monday beats out Black Friday in popularity for the second year in a row, with nearly 72% of consumers planning to shop online for Cyber Monday and only 69% shopping the traditional Black Friday sales

Despite the pull of Black Friday’s signature doorbusters, more consumers plan to shop online that day (44%) than in store (42%)

47% of men and 33% of women do all of their holiday shopping on Christmas Eve.
Mobile trends:

Technology continues to play a major part of the shopping holiday with a 17% increase in mobile use in the past two years.

Nearly three-quarters of consumers (73%) plan to use their mobile devices to assist with holiday shopping.

Mobile use is not up from people shopping on their phones, but from consumers heavily relying on mobile devices to look for coupons, compare prices, check reviews and get directions to the store for an optimal holiday shopping experience.

Millennial trends:

Although Cyber Monday proved to be favored more overall, Black Friday shopping garnered a surprising surge of popularity with millennials.

Younger generations are 19% more likely than any other age group to hit the brick-and-mortar stores come Thanksgiving and Black Friday.

As the tech generation, 88% of millennials will be shopping on Cyber Monday this year – roughly 20% more than the shoppers over 35 who plan to do so.

Millennials are also more likely to shop for experiences this holiday season than older generations (25% vs 11%), who are more focused on physical items such as clothes and technology.

Online shopping trends:

With online retailers undercutting brick-and-mortar retailers (and the obvious convenience factor), online shopping is becoming increasingly compelling for shoppers.

Holiday-shopping aside, the overwhelming majority of U.S. adults (96%) shop online throughout the year. The majority (64%) do so at least monthly, up from 57% in 2016.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday Retail Trends

Stores such as Target, Walmart and Kohl’s will be the busiest - but for a good reason. Year after year these retailers have shown major discounts on the top items consumers are looking for such as clothing, electronics, gift cards and toys. A new player in the game is Amazon, having risen to the top spot in consumer popularity within the recent years. With Amazon providing sales on both Black Friday and Cyber Monday, plus price matching, fast shipping and no lines, it’s not hard to see why the online retail giant has risen to the top.

Top retailers this holiday season (and the percentage of consumers shopping there):

Amazon -67%

Walmart - 60%

Target - 45%

Kohl’s - 29%

Best Buy - 26%

Top holiday gift items (and the percentage of consumers looking for deals on these items):

Clothing - 54%

Electronics (TVs, Tablets, etc) - 46%

Gift Cards - 39%

Toys - 37%

Video games and equipments - 33%