Shoppers Are Getting Pickier This Holiday. Is Your Marketing Ready to Compete for Their Dollars?

Shoppers are tightening their purse string this holiday season. 96% already say they plan to actively try to stretch their budget this year to shop smarter according to one 2026 Smart Shopper Holiday Study. 91% of shoppers have also expressed concerned about inflation and its impact on their holiday spending. This means there will be less overall consumer spend to go around.

The study even more stats buried almost 20 pages in that are just as alarming to brands: 

• 36% percent of shoppers are trimming coworkers off their gift list this year. 
• 27% are cutting friends. 
• 9% are skipping a gift for themselves.

In fact, buying fewer or cheaper gifts ranks among shoppers’ top strategies for getting through the season, right alongside comparing prices and waiting for sales.

Put those together and the picture is clear: shoppers aren’t just being more careful with each dollar.

There are fewer dollars total, split across more contested purchase decisions than in past years.

Fewer Dollars, More Competition for Every One of Them

A few more numbers from the report show what that competition looks like:

• 82% feel confident they can find the best price, and are actively comparing before they buy
• Nearly 25% of shoppers start before October, and 63% are still buying into December, so the season plays out across several distinct buying moments, not one

With less overall spend available and more research happening before every purchase, brands aren’t just competing for attention. They’re competing for a shrinking number of purchase decisions shoppers are willing to make at all.

The Big Questions

If shoppers have fewer dollars to spend and are being this deliberate about where they go, the obvious questions every marketing team is asking are: 

1. What channels should I be advertising on to really move the need and which can I cut?
2. What does our creative need to say to actually earn one of those decisions? 
3. And just as important, how would we know if our creatives and discounts are driving sales?

Those are very different problems, worth treating separately.

Knowing What’s Already Being Said

Creative Compass is a free report from Lifesight that gives you an in-depth, side-by-side read on your creative versus your competitors’: the hooks, offers, and angles each of you is running right now, with specific ideas surfaced for what to test next. Instead of guessing at a message for a shopper who’s already comparison-shopping across three tabs, you start from a clear picture of what’s actually out theret.

Knowing What Actually Worked

A creative getting clicks and a creative driving incremental sales are not always the same thing, and the same is true of a channel getting credit for a conversion versus a channel actually causing it. Lifesight’s causal measurement shows the incremental lift a specific creative or channel actually generated, separate from whatever credit a platform’s own reporting gives itself. That’s how you know not just whether a message worked, but whether the budget behind it was in the right place to begin with.

The Takeaway

The report describes a more selective shopper with less to spend overall. For brands, that means fewer chances to earn a purchase, and more value in knowing both what’s resonating across the market and where your own spend is actually paying off.

If you want a look at what’s currently working across your category, get your free Creative Compass report and see your creative stacked up against your competitors’. If you want to take a look at which channels are working and which you could cut, set up a short meeting with our team and measurement experts can help you walk through a solid strategy to uncover your true incremental campaigns.

Happy Selling!