If e-commerce marketers would give another name to Easter—they’d probably call it “the first real sales period of the year.”
That’s somewhat true,isn’t it?
Almost 70% of US shoppers plan to celebrate it. And in marketing language, celebrating something means spending money on non-essential stuff.
The real question is… how much spending? The economy is recovering slowly and shoppers are spending-shy.
If you’re running Easter–specific campaigns, should their success or failure surprise you?
That’s exactly what we’ll look into now.
🐇 Why this report? Easter is the first “big” holiday in the US after last year’s Q4 and is usually a good sign of things to come.
By assessing shopping behavior during this time, we might be able to get some insight into how consumers are thinking about holiday spending in the coming months. It will hopefully stay relevant as we move into the latter period of the year.
Easter Spending Will Drop in 2024
People might break eggs, but hardly anyone will break the bank.
It appears that this year’s Easter holidays will not be as lucrative as last year’s, which tells us shoppers don’t really feel as confident in buying non-essential holiday items.
Here’s how it looks like:
🖱️📈 Clicking on each individual chart will take you to its interactive board.
The pandemic brought quite a high jump, then there was another between 2022 and 2023. But it seems shoppers realized that the economy isn’t going to recover that easily.
And here’s a chart that confirms it:
A similar trend follows.
At first glance, this doesn’t look that bad—and it seems to be more in line with the previous years barring the 2023 “anomaly.”
But if you’ve read our previous report on e-commerce growth, you’ll know that, adjusted for inflation, this spending is realistically much lower than the spending in 2020 or 2021.
Bottom line: If your Easter sales campaigns were underwhelming, you shouldn’t be too hard on yourself. And if you crushed it—rejoice. You are in the minority.
Where Will Easter Shoppers Shop in 2024?
To get a better overview of how shoppers will spend their money, we can look at where they plan to spend their money.
And the answers are… not surprising:
Over half of all shoppers will look at discount stores, while one third will try to find their Easter products online.
Only 20% of shoppers will look at specialty stores and local businesses.
We looked at a different source to see whether the answers align:
It’s more or less the same story. Discounts and department stores are dominating, online stores are in the middle, while specialty stores and services are at the bottom.
What you can do: Given that the trend of bargain shopping appears to continue, make sure to emphasize it in your offers. No matter what you sell—and not only for Easter.
💡 Stacked Marketer Pro member? You can check out our Holiday Marketing Deep Dive for practical and proven tips on how to advertise on Easter… and various other holidays.
How will shoppers spend their Easter and what will they buy?
Being in is “in,” it seems like.
By that, we mean that most shoppers will most likely celebrate Easter by gathering with family and friends—and by cooking, baking, decorating, and hosting others at their home:
What does this tell us? It might be a good time to promote non-essential items, especially in the home and lifestyle categories. And since shoppers will focus more on their own home decoration, they will probably think about gifting similar products to their loved ones.
Here’s what other products are “in:”
You know what that means—consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands could’ve really taken this opportunity more than anyone.
But considering that each of these categories still sells by a few percentages less than in previous years—even CPG brands must be more creative.
How? For instance, creating specialized Easter bundles, which would be discounted and could be also sold as gifts. At least that’s what we would do by looking at the data.
Easter 2024: Verdict
If we were to describe Easter spending in 2024 with one word, we’d say—cautious.
There’s an air of cautious consumer sentiment with a preference for bargain shopping and home-centered celebrations, which means you need to put on your creative strategy hat.
Plus, as mentioned, we can look at this trend to sort of “predict” how this year’s holiday shopping will unravel. And it’s not looking that promising, huh?
Overall, the trend of slowing down caught the Easter Bunny as well.
Let’s just hope it doesn’t lose out to the Economy Turtle…
Sources
The report sourced data from the following:
