Holiday Shopping Budgets Reset in 2026 as Shoppers Trade Off Value

What happened

Consumers are resetting their holiday spending this year rather than abandoning it, according to the eighth annual 2026 Holiday Shopping Study from Simon-Kucher, as reported by Retail Customer Experience. Higher prices and rising living costs, including increased fuel costs, are the main drivers of the change.

The study also indicates that retailers' revenue growth is likely to come from higher prices rather than from customers buying more. In a press release on the findings, Shikha Jain, partner and head of consumer for North America at Simon-Kucher, said that high fuel costs and inflation have made shoppers far more focused on value and deals.

Shoppers are starting their purchases earlier, but they are scaling back discretionary items. Instead, they are using holiday promotions to stock up on basic necessities. Jain added that financial pressure is growing for lower and middle-income households, which are weighing record debt against everyday essentials, with holiday gifts adding to that strain.

Why it matters

The findings point to a clear behavioural pattern: shoppers are not walking away from the holiday period, but they are reframing it around trade-offs. Timing, channel choice and promotional response are all shifting as people decide what they can afford. For retailers, a promotion is no longer only a sales tool. It is increasingly the place where a customer decides whether a brand meets an essential need at a price they can justify.

For leaders in experience and digital transformation, the implication is that value perception now carries more weight than volume. Pricing, offer design and the journey that delivers deals will shape loyalty as much as the product itself. Any organisation that relies on price increases to grow revenue will need to watch closely how that affects trust and repeat purchase.

By the numbers

• Eighth annual edition of Simon-Kucher's Holiday Shopping Study.
• 2026 is the study year covered by the findings.

The Renascence take

The headline reads as a budget story, but the more useful lens is behavioural. When a household has to choose between essentials and gifts, it is not simply cutting spend; it is reassigning the emotional meaning of the season and deciding which experiences are worth the stress.

Most retailers will read a shift to promotions as a discount problem to be solved with more deals. In reality, shoppers are signalling that the trade-off itself is the experience, and brands that make that trade-off simple, transparent and fair will earn the basket. Customer-obsessed operators should map where shoppers feel financial strain in the journey, from browsing to checkout to returns, and remove friction and surprise at each point. The brands that win this season will be the ones that help customers feel in control of their spending, not the ones that simply push harder on price.