The average holiday shopper expects to spend $804.42 this season, up 5 percent from $767.27 last year, and plans to do a record 44.4 percent of shopping online, according to a survey from the National Retail Federation.
In addition to a growing reliance on online shopping, mobile shopping is also on the rise, with 55.7 percent of consumers expected to use their smartphone to shop, mostly to research products, according to the survey of 7,500 consumers. Nineteen percent said they plan to purchase items through their mobile phones, up from 16.4 percent last year.
The survey for the first time asked if consumers feel comfortable paying with a smartphone or tablet at the store checkout counter, a hot topic in the growing conversation around mobile payments. Forty-two percent said they are not comfortable with it.
The survey findings from the retail industry’s largest trade group paint a much rosier picture of the coming holiday season than a report last week from PricewaterhouseCoopers that found the average household will spend $684 for the holidays, down 6.9 percent from $735 last year. That survey, of 2,200 consumers, found a stark divide between households with incomes of $50,000 or more, which plan to spend an average of $978, and those with incomes less than $50,000, which plan to spend $377.