2019 holiday shopping results so far: Members spend more, shift to digital channels

The Thanksgiving holiday shopping weekend – Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday – has become the busiest time of year for U.S. retailers and consumers. This year nearly 190 million consumers shopped over the five day period, representing a 14 percent increase from last year.

Credit union members closely followed this trend, according to our latest analysis of CO-OP Credit and Debit transactions over the holiday shopping weekend.  Credit cardholders spent an average of $323 over the five-day period, up more than 10 percent over last year’s average of $292. For their part, debit cardholders spent an average of $264 from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday, an increase of nearly 17 percent (+16.8%) over the same period in 2018.

Knowing how and where members are spending during busy shopping periods like Thanksgiving Weekend is valuable intelligence to a credit union. For one, it helps you better understand your members, what they value and which channels they prefer to use. It can also help inspire ideas for customized marketing campaigns and promotions that help drive your credit and debit cards to the top of your members’ wallets.

Here were the key findings from our 2019 Thanksgiving Weekend Shopping Analysis:

 

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