- News data shows 2025 holiday spending outpaced the previous year in spite of economic woes.
- Online spending set a new record but in-person purchases still dominate the shopping season.
- Early discounts, AI shopping assistance and deferred payment options helped drive spending.
In the face of a U.S. economy beset by persistent inflation, skyrocketing housing costs and a softening labor market, a majority of Americans told pollsters that fiscal concerns would lead to tighter spending budgets at the start of the 2025 winter holiday shopping season.
But tracking data that is beginning to emerge shows holiday shoppers outspent themselves this year compared to 2024, though overall growth is only a bit greater than the rate of inflation over the past year.
Reports from credit card issuers Visa and Mastercard found overall holiday spending increased by 4.2% and 3.95%, respectively, in figures that excluded new vehicle purchases and were not adjusted for inflation.
Online or in-store?
A Visa breakdown shows 73% of Americans shopped in stores, while 27% made online purchases. Michelle Meyer, chief economist for Mastercard’s Economics Institute, said consumers demonstrated flexibility and confidence in their 2025 holiday spending decisions and “blended online and in-store shopping to find the best deals and maximize convenience.”
Brick-and-mortar retailers saw holiday spending jump about 2.9% compared to 2024 but e-commerce outlets easily outpaced that rate with online sales, moving up 6.8% and hitting a record $257.8 billion from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31, according to tracking by Adobe Analytics.
Adobe analysts said early discount offers from retailers, referrals from artificial intelligence platforms and buy-now, pay-later payment options all helped push 2025’s online holiday spending into record territory.
“This 2025 holiday season, consumers embraced generative AI more than ever as a shopping assistant in their purchasing decisions,” Vivek Pandya, Adobe Digital Insights lead analyst, said in a statement Wednesday. “Competitive discounts and flexible payment options like buy now, pay later also contributed to driving record spending of $257.8 billion throughout this holiday season.”
Twenty-five days saw $4 billion or more in online spending in the 2025 holiday season, up from days in 2024, per Adobe. Cyber Week, the five days from Thanksgiving to CyberMonday, continues to anchor online spending during the holiday season and this year spending reached $44.2 billion over the period, up 7.7% over 2024. Cyber Monday remained the biggest e-commerce day of the season and the year, with consumers making $14.25 billion in online purchases that day.
Holiday shoppers upped their use of buy-now, pay-later programs with the payment-deferred spending options hitting $20 billion for the first time in 2025. In an Adobe Adobe survey of over 1,000 U.S. consumers conducted near the start of the holiday shopping season, respondents said they were most likely to use buy-now, pay-later options for electronics, apparel, toys and furniture.
Over the 2025 holiday shopping season, traffic to retail sites from artificial intelligence-powered chat services and browsers increased by nearly 700% compared to the year prior, per Adobe tracking. On Cyber Monday, AI traffic to U.S. retail sites increased by 670%.
Consumer pessimism to start the season
The overall spending bump followed self-reporting by most consumers at the start of the holiday shopping season that focused on money concerns and household budgets being challenged by worsening economic conditions.
Statewide and national surveys conducted for the Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics by Morning Consult on Nov. 7-13 found a sizable swath of Utahns who said they were set to pare back their 2025 holiday spending.
When asked to choose the categories that best reflected their 2025 holiday spending plans, almost half of Utahns, 49%, said they would spend less than last year. About a third, 32%, reported they would spend about the same as they did in 2024 and 11% were planning on upping their holiday budgets.
Responses to the same question in the national sample tracked very closely to Utahns’ sentiments, with 47% saying they were cutting holiday spending, 34% matching last year’s holiday budget and 9% reporting plans to increase holiday spending.
So how big were those holiday budgets?
A plurality of respondents in both the Utah and national surveys, 48% and 46%, respectively, reported they planned to spend less than $500 on 2025 holiday shopping. A similar portion of Utah and national poll participants, 17% and 16%, respectively, expected to spend over $1,000 while 30% of Utah respondents and 26% of national participants had budget plans in the $500 to $999 range.
