2025 holiday season consumer spending

Year-over-year consumer insights on sentiment, 2024-2025

Consumers are cautious, but consistent

To kick things off, we asked survey takers, "Compared to this time last year (Sept-Dec 2023/2024), how have your stress levels related to money changed?"

In 2024, 66% of Highlighters said they were more stressed about money than the period in the previous year, 65% answered the same in 2025.

The story is the same when it comes to groceries

We then asked survey takers, "Compared to how you felt this time last year (Sept-Dec 2023/2024), are you more or less concerned about the cost of groceries?"

In 2024, 81% of Highlighters were more concerned than the period in the previous year, 80% answered the same in 2025.

When it comes to grocery prices, consumers are still adjusting to the new normal

While we can't draw definitive conclusions about the reasons driving this sense of concern about grocery prices among survey Highlighters, we all know as grocery shoppers ourselves that the grocery landscape has changed tremendously over the last five years.

In just these few data points from Pew Research comparing grocery price changes from January 2020 to August 2025, we can see a clear story:

While the initial period of inflation following the original COVID pandemic of 2020 has cooled, US consumers are still adjusting to our "new normal" where prices are, on average, 28% higher than they were just a few years ago.

Shoppers are foregoing more “just for fun” purchases

We also asked Highlighters, "Compared to this time last year (Sept-Dec 2023/2024), how have your spending habits on 'just for fun' purchases changed?"

While in 2024, 63% of Highlighters were making fewer “just for fun” purchases than the same period in the previous year, that number jumped to 70% in 2025.

Consumers say they’re doing less to save

Although a majority of survey Highlighters said they are feeling more stressed about money than the previous year, in this year's results, Highlighters across the board reported doing less to relieve financial stress. (We asked: "In the past 12 months, what have you done to relieve stress related to money? (Select all that apply.)")

As you can see, 70% of Highlighters say they are making fewer "just for fun" buys, and in 2025, Highlighters also said they are:

From this data, we can consider a few possibilities for the underlying cause of these behaviors and why they have all decreased slightly year-over-year:

  1. Perhaps as consumers adjust to our "new normal" where grocery prices - and other costs - are higher, they are already settled into new "budget habits" that are working for them

  2. Perhaps consumers have already "pulled" all of these potential "levers" already over the years since 2020 in an effort to relieve financial stress.

Likewise, consumers are doing slightly less to manage grocery costs in 2025

When we dug more specifically into how consumers are navigating higher grocery prices, we asked Highlighters to share with us, "In the past 12 months, in what ways have you grocery shopped in an effort to save money? (Select all that apply.)" They said:

Highlighters told us they are:

As in the previous question, we'd have to dig into qualitative research to really understand the drivers behind these quantitative results (and we will for Showcase 2026!), but one increase that stood out to us - because it was the only increase year over year - was that more Highlighters say they are switching to store brands, giving yet more credence to the headlines around private label that we've been seeing in recent years.

Private label’s power holds firm with shoppers

When it comes to opinions on and perceptions of private label brands and products, we see consumer sentiment and loyalty creep up year over year, as in the following responses:

Year over year, we see consumers generally continuing to choose private label with slight increases in affinity in 2025. While a small minority of shoppers say their reason for buying private label is still about price point, more shoppers - nearly half now - are appreciating private label products for their value, and fewer have concerns about quality. A steady quarter of all shoppers said they genuinely prefer the store brand - an encouraging insight to see for those product innovators on the retail side who are working hard to create high value products that shoppers really love.

What private label brands do shoppers love the most?

We used a two-part question to learn more about true consumer sentiment on different private label brands as a tactic for bridging the "say-do" gap. First, we asked consumers what stores sell their favorite store brands. Then, we asked from which stores they had actually bought store brands in the past three months. Here's how the ranking fell out, year over year:

When it comes to both stated affinity and actual shopping behaviors, Walmart topped the charts. With its market penetration and years of consistent value messaging, it's no surprise to see its demonstrated popularity amongst shoppers.

Another interesting result to see is the continued and growing popularity of Aldi. While every town in America may have a Walmart, Aldi still has room to grow, and as it spreads across the US, more and more shoppers are getting excited to try their store brands.

What’s ahead for the holiday consumer spending?

Looking ahead to the holiday season, we asked Highlighters, "During the holiday season, do you usually stick to your budget, or spend more than usual?" This is an interesting question to look at year-over-year results for, because it's less about real, stated behaviors and more about how our perception of ourselves evolve with our environmental conditions.

It's interesting to see such big changes in how consumers see themselves year over year. Once again, this is an area of research that we'd love to dig further into with qualitative methods.

Brands will have to fight for every dollar splurged this holiday season

When we asked Highlighters "In what categories do you plan to splurge this holiday season?" we saw perhaps the biggest year-over-year change of the survey. While in 2024, the answer "No plans to splurge" was the sixth most popular response, it was the top response for 2025.

When we segmented responses by two key cohorts: Millennial women vs Gen Z women, we were able to see some interesting insights, including millennial women's plans to splurge on products for children. The younger cohort of Gen Z women, however, are looking forward to splurging on categories perhaps for themselves: Beauty and personal care, and even a significant amount naming "Tech & electronics" as a category they plan to splurge on this upcoming holiday season.

Most consumers remain ambivalent about 2026

When we asked Highlighters to look ahead to 2026 and make predictions about their budget, we saw remarkable consistency in an "ambivalent middle" - 40% both in 2024 and again in 2025 who expect managing their budget to remain consistent in the coming year.

Takeaway for CPG brands: "The point of our business is happiness."

While much of the consumer data remained consistent year over year, we can't ignore the growing pessimism expressed by a significant proportion of survey Highlighters. Those CPG innovators who do ignore this may miss a significant opportunity.

Yes, consumers are looking for products that function as intended or satisfy a need. But don't miss out on your opportunity to build affinity and real, long-term loyalty with your consumers by bringing moments of joy to their day-to-day shopping and product experiences.