Malls and Retailers Set for Busy Holiday Shopping Season: Report

The holidays are fast approaching, and consumer analysts predict a surge in shopping traffic.

A strong retail performance so far this year should make for a busy holiday shopping season, according to a report from location analytics company Placer.ai.

During the first eight months of 2024, brick-and-mortar retail saw consistent growth of shoppers walking through their doors, with foot traffic up 2.7 percent in August compared to the same period last year, according to Placer.ai’s report. And the number of shoppers is set to go up as holiday sales pick up early.

Retailers in shopping malls and brick-and-mortar stores alike are already preparing for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Christmas with early deals and promotions — a strategy that may pay off as more shoppers look to buy in-person rather than online.

“Brands will try to get customers to buy earlier in the season, especially with the tighter Thanksgiving-to-Christmas calendar,” Soozan Baxter, owner of Soozan Baxter Consulting, said in an email to Commercial Observer. “Retailers have learned to adapt to supply chains better, and the days of being very promotional [or] last-minute slashing of prices are starting to dwindle, and as a result, last-minute shoppers may find that inventory is a little tighter.”

Placer.ai’s prediction of busy holiday traffic was based on upticks in visits over various holidays so far in 2024, such as Mother’s Day, Labor Day and Memorial Day — the latter of which saw visits increase 7.2 percent year-over-year in department stores, the report showed.

As for the big shopping holiday of Christmas, in 2023 department stores saw the highest surge in visitors of the year — a 113.4 percent increase compared to the year’s weekly average — and they’re positioned to see the same trends this year, according to Placer.ai.

Many companies also seem to be following Amazon’s mandate of returning to the office five days per week, meaning shoppers are flocking to retailers like Gap, Banana Republic and Sephora for work attire and beauty products, Baxter said.

The hobbies, gifts and crafts category has also seen a jump in business during the holiday season, according to Placer.ai, as more people look to make and give thoughtful gifts. Other popular sectors over the holiday season include beauty and wellness products, apparel, and discount and dollar stores.

However, Kate Newlin, a retail brand consultant and president of Kate Newlin Consulting, told CO that despite the increase in visitors to retailers, “foot traffic is no longer an accurate tool to measure the health prognosis of the mall-based retail sector.”

The malls still operating successfully in the U.S. are those that have expanded far beyond just retail, Newlin said. Those malls have games and activities, movie theaters, upscale restaurants and even rides and festivals, so shoppers aren’t merely “spending time or money at Macy’s,” she said.

And as more and more retail bankruptcies and closings pile up, it remains to be seen how malls will fare in the greater scheme of things — even with a strong holiday performance.

Isabelle Durso can be reached at idurso@commercialobserver.com.