Retail Shows Minor Holiday Gains, and That’s OK — ‘Steady Is the New Strong’

The American economy is tough. But American shoppers are apparently tougher.  

While site visit and other location data from 2025’s holiday shopping season indicates a rough balance of ups and downs for retail, one trend was clear: Consumers took a determined but tight-walleted approach to shopping, as value outlets showed the largest increases in foot traffic from Americans set on spending this holiday season.

Beginning with Thanksgiving week — including Black Friday — visits to U.S. malls jumped 14.2 percent month-over-month and 29.5 percent week-over-week, including a 153 percent week-over-week jump on Black Friday itself, according to MRI Software, a proptech provider that tracks performance metrics for brick-and-mortar retail.

More promisingly, Placer.ai, which also offers foot traffic analysis for retail, noted a 3.1 percent increase in indoor mall traffic from Black Friday 2024 to Black Friday 2025.

“The overall state of retail was pretty strong,” said R.J. Hottovy, head of analytical research at Placer.ai. “We saw visits up year-over-year 1.6 percent from Black Friday to Christmas Eve compared to a year ago. What that tells me is, even though we are dealing with some consumer pressure, they prioritize the holiday.”

The optimism in some of these numbers flags somewhat when we see that overall foot traffic in shopping malls declined year-over-year if we take all of November into account. Shopping mall visits dropped 1.6 percent annually in November, according to MRI. Overall, the company characterizes this as “a picture of sharp short-term momentum set against a backdrop of longer-
term economic caution.”

“While the buzz of early holiday promotions drove a powerful uplift in visits to shopping malls, particularly during Black Friday week, annual declines in foot traffic suggest that many shoppers continue to tread carefully with discretionary spending,” the company said in a release on the topic of U.S. pedestrian traffic trends in November. 

U.S. downtowns, meanwhile, also received mixed signals. 

American street retailers saw double-digit week-over-week increases in visits in the days leading up to Black Friday, and a 3.8 percent boost on the special shopping day itself. 

But the macro numbers were less encouraging, with a 4.2 percent drop month-to-month, and a 1.1 percent drop compared to the same day in 2024. Foot traffic in U.S. downtowns for all of Thanksgiving week, including the holiday itself and Black Friday, saw a year-over-year dip of 2.7 percent, according to MRI, which also noted that comparative mall traffic was down similarly, at 2.5 percent.    

“These declines align with broader macro pressures that have been reflected in falling foot traffic for the best part of 2025,” MRI said in the release, “from rising household costs to reduced domestic and international tourism, suggesting that while shoppers are responding to promotional events, they are doing so with a sharp eye on value.”

Regarding the stagnating downtown figures, Carla Hinson, MRI Software’s vice president of solutions and innovation for North America, noted that steep drops in tourism have combined with office visit figures that, while seemingly en route to recovery, are still shy of pre-pandemic numbers, to produce traffic figures on a slight downward trend line.

“What’s interesting in downtown areas is that we started to see an uptick, and then you start to see it decline, because people are settling in, getting ready for the holidays. There’s not as much tourism happening, right? You associate that with foot traffic,” said Hinson. “Then, also, there are fewer people going into offices. Downtown areas are really impacted by office occupancy. So, as you get closer to the holidays, there’s more time off, so you see a bit of a decline.”

Hinson notes that one retail tradition still very much intact is last-minute panic shopping. Malls throughout the country appear to have profited, with a 20.3 percent foot traffic jump on Christmas Eve when compared with the week prior.

“Malls seem to really benefit from that last-minute procrastination shopping when we look at the numbers,” said Hinson. “They had sharp spikes on Christmas Eve, and I think that’s because people are looking for everything in one place.”

Even without a Dec. 24 spike, however, Hinson is approaching the latest mall figures with a glass-half-full optimism, noting that after several years of severe ups and downs for retail, steady is the new soaring.

“That shopping still happened. There were still people in malls,” said Hinson. “In certain areas of the country, malls have really struggled in the recent past while we’ve seen downtown areas really increasing their foot traffic. So it’s a good thing that [mall visitations] at least didn’t decline in that period.”

In other positive shopping news, Placer.ai notes that Dec. 20, the Saturday before Christmas, was a prosperous day for discount and dollar stores, thrift stores and wholesale clubs. 

The firm said that Ollie’s Bargain Outlet, which bills itself as “America’s largest retailer of closeout merchandise and excess inventory,” saw a 20.9 percent year-over-year increase in foot traffic. Ross Dress for Less saw a jump of 9.1 percent, and Dollar General’s foot traffic went up 8.2 percent.

The full category of “discount and dollar stores,” in fact, saw a 6.2 percent increase in foot traffic from the Saturday before Christmas in 2024, according to Placer.ai. The only category with a larger annual jump was thrift stores with a 14.8 percent increase.   

By contrast, retailers with less specific focuses on discounts or value fared less well, according to Placer.ai, which found year-over-year foot traffic decreases of 20.7 percent for Macy’s, 17.7 percent for GameStop and 11.9 percent for Lululemon.    

On the negative end of the year-to-year comparison, foot traffic dropped the most — 9.8 percent — at “luxury department stores, apparel and accessories.” Big-box “superstores” saw a 5.4 percent drop, and the “recreational and sporting goods” category dipped by 5.1 percent since the same day in 2024.

“Super Saturday 2025 [the Saturday before Christmas] was largely a continuation of the trends we’ve seen throughout the shopping season, with value-oriented channels — such as warehouse clubs and off-price retailers — performing well, while discretionary retailers saw more mixed results,” Hottovy said in a statement. “Home improvement was a standout among the discretionary category, benefiting from favorable weather in parts of the U.S., whereas department stores generally saw year-over-year declines. As observed in recent years, consumers appear to be waiting for last-minute sales before purchasing discretionary items.”

While site visit numbers show mixed results for retailers, pure dollar figures, likely driven at least in part by increased prices, reveal that consumers spent more this year with retailers.

According to holiday spending data released on Dec. 23 by Visa, total U.S. retail spending — excluding cars, gas and restaurants, but including online shopping — was up 4.2 percent for the period from Nov. 1 to Dec. 21. The company had predicted holiday growth of 4.56 percent for the full November-December period.

Mastercard, in figures released on the same day that included sales from retail and food service establishments over the same period, reported spending growth of 3.9 percent year-over-year, eclipsing projections of 3.6 percent.

In their respective announcements, economists from both companies mentioned that budget consciousness was a factor for consumers, with many shopping early, hunting for deeply discounted promotions, and even using artificial intelligence to help compare prices and find the best values.

One other factor in all this spending has been the use of Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) programs, which allow a purchase to be split into several payments without having to use a credit card and without buyers needing any credit approvals. 

While complete holiday season figures were not available in the final week of December, Bloomberg reports that, based on an analysis by business intelligence firm Morning Consult, “one in four American shoppers paid for a purchase in November with BNPL, the highest rate on record for the country’s shoppers and a 6 percentage point increase from the prior year period.” 

Klarna, the premier provider of BNPL programs, reported that sales grew 45 percent annually for the period between Nov. 1 and Nov. 28, which was Black Friday. The company noted that this growth was steady “across all categories,” with “footwear, technology, beauty and home goods performing particularly strong.”

Yahoo Finance, quoting figures from Adobe Analytics, noted that U.S. shoppers paid for $10 billion worth of purchases through BNPL programs in November, with over $1 billion of that just on Cyber Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving. All told, more than 7 percent of all Cyber Monday spending came through BNPL programs. While more recent figures weren’t available, the article notes that according to Capital One, “Americans bought more than $116 billion via the plans in 2023,” and that about half of Americans have used BNPL programs at this point.

Since BNPL lenders aren’t required to report to credit bureaus, “it’s difficult to peg exactly how big the BNPL debt pile is, because it’s largely invisible.”

On top of all this, some find this early January analysis of the 2025 holiday shopping season premature.

Avison Young, in a new report on holiday retail trends, notes that the sales that take place in January — what it calls the year’s “Q5” — are pivotal when calculating the total sweep of holiday sales.  “The holiday season now lasts half the year — and January might just be retail’s secret weapon,” the report reads, noting that mid-January promotions and redemptions should be considered as much a part of the holiday shopping season as Black Friday or Cyber Monday.

“Spanning Dec. 26 through mid-January, Q5 captures high-intent spending through gift card redemptions, returns that trigger incremental purchases, and resolution-driven demand in categories like fitness, wellness, beauty and travel. … The sustained engagement into January will increasingly rival pre-holiday traffic and sales,” Avison Young’s report reads. 

Because of this, the brokerage believes retailers need to revise their thinking around the immediate post-holiday period, “activating the period with semi-annual sales, resolution-themed campaigns, and January-only promotions” instead of slicing ad budgets and bracing for contractions.

Viewing the big picture, the various indicators show an economy still struggling to recover from myriad long-standing obstacles, and consumers determined to spend despite stagnant incomes and rising costs.

“Even though we are dealing with a lot of macroeconomic uncertainty, we are also dealing with a consumer that is resilient and wants to be out there, and retail is an important destination for them,” said Placer.ai’s Hottovy. “The biggest takeaway is that this is a consumer that wants to participate in the holiday. They want to spend, and they’ll find a way to do it.”

Larry Getlen can be reached at lgetlen@commercialobserver.com.