In the so-called Cyber Week, which starts with Black Friday on November 25th and wants to encourage consumers to shop with discounts, the mood to buy could be more restrained than in recent years. At least that is the result of the current report “Trend Check Retail”, which was created by ECC Cologne in cooperation with Salesforce and is representative of the population. The aim was to capture a current mood on consumer behavior in Germany.
According to this, consumers plan savings both on the dealer campaign days around Black Friday and Cyber Monday, as well as in the Christmas business. Purchases during Cyber Week are prepared more carefully and offers are compared more. Bargain hunting will take place in 2022 with a stronger price focus in the face of inflation and price increases. Three quarters of consumers who want to take advantage of the campaign days at the end of November state that they will pay even more attention to prices this year and only specifically buy products that were planned to be purchased anyway. That’s what 76 percent of respondents say. Overall, more is being planned: at 43 percent, almost half of Cyber Week users want to find out more in advance, which is 13 percent more than in the previous year. Or they only want to buy products that are otherwise too expensive, say 67 percent. Consumers also seem to be becoming more skeptical: 55 percent fear that many offers are not real bargains.
Spontaneous impulse purchases, on the other hand, are only planned by very few. Only a third of those surveyed would like to make spontaneous purchase decisions during Cyber Week. In the previous year, around half (46 percent) wanted to do this.
A more conscious and economical consumer behavior is also manifested with regard to the Christmas season. Especially when visiting the Christmas market – often an attraction for stationary retailers – around every second person wants to spend less. The Christmas customs of the Advent calendar and the Christmas tree are also more economical: 39 percent plan to spend less in this regard. Respondents want to save least on gifts and Christmas dinner; around a third wants to spend less here than in 2021.
For the present fifth survey round, around 500 consumers were asked about their shopping behavior, general consumer trends and consumer sentiment in a representative online survey at the end of October 2022.