Foot traffic at retailers soared on Dec. 21, the Saturday before Christmas. Here’s a look at the potential winners from the last week of holiday shopping.
What Happened: Foot traffic at retailers was up an average of 58% compared to daily averages in 2024, a trend that could see retail stocks benefit for the 2024 holiday shopping season.
The 58% gain to the daily average, reported by Placer.ai, is higher than the 51.1% gain over the daily average seen on Black Friday. Sunday, Dec. 22, also saw retail foot traffic up 38.2% to the daily average.
While foot traffic was up compared to the daily average for the year, the 58% gain was smaller than last year’s Super Saturday, which saw a 74.4% increase from the daily average. The caveat with last year’s data is that Super Saturday was Dec. 23, one of the last remaining shopping days before Christmas.
Among the potential biggest winners for this year’s Christmas shopping season could be department stores, based on the report.
Overall foot traffic to department stores was up 128.7% compared to the Saturday 2024 daily average, surpassing last year’s 119.4% increase over the 2023 Saturday average.
Among the department stores tracked by Placer.ai, these were the year-over-year visit growth:
- Nordstrom JWN: +8.8%
- Bloomingdale’s, a unit of Macy’s M: +4.7%
- JCPenney: +1.3%
The report also found that recreational and sporting goods stores, beauty and self-care stores and other specialty categories saw strong traffic gains. Here’s a look at some of the retailers tracked and the foot traffic gains on a year-over-year basis to last year’s Super Saturday:
- Ollie’s Bargain Outlet OLLI: +7.3%
- T.J. Maxx, a unit of TJX Companies TJX: +4.6%
- Five Below FIVE: +4.2%
The report found that superstores, grocery stores, and discount retailers saw lower year-over-year growth due to last year’s timing of Super Saturday being so close to Christmas.
Indoor shopping malls like those owned by Simon Property Group SPG may have also benefitted from Super Saturday. Placer.ai data shows that foot traffic to indoor malls was up 177.1% on Super Saturday compared to the 2024 daily average.
Why It’s Important: Ahead of Super Saturday, the National Retail Foundation estimated that 157.2 million consumers would shop on the shopping holiday based on an annual survey.
The figure comes in higher than the 141.9 million Super Saturday shoppers in 2024 and is the second highest figure over the last nine years, trailing only 158.5 million in 2022.
“Super Saturday is one of the last opportunities during the holiday season for consumers to get the remaining items on their shopping list,” NRF Vice President of Industry and Consumer Insights Katherine Cullen said.
Cullen cited the shortened holiday shopping season, due to Thanksgiving falling late in November, boosting the odds of last-minute shoppers.
The survey found that 69.5 million people plan to shop both in-store and online, up from 58.3 million in 2023. The amount of people exclusively shopping in-store was down in the survey from 37% to 31%, while the percentage of people who said they would shop exclusively online increased from 22% to 24%.
Similar to the results above, the NRF survey highlighted department stores as potential winners on Super Saturday, with 37% of shoppers saying they planned to finish their holiday shopping there.
Finishing shopping online was the most popular response at 49%, with discount stores named by 27% of consumers and clothing and accessory stores named by 25% of consumers.
The NRF survey found the most popular gift purchases were clothing and accessories (50%), toys (32%), gift cards (26%) and books, video games and other media (24%).
The shortened holiday shopping season could have been good for retailers with more foot traffic each day and especially on the weekends. The key will be if the daily increase is enough to offset the lower number of total shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
The post-Christmas shopping time could also see a boost, with 71% of consumers in the survey saying they planned to shop after Christmas, similar to last year’s survey.
NRF estimates that the entire holiday shopping season of Nov. 1 through Dec. 31 is expected to be up 2.5% to 3% from 2024, hitting a record range of $979.5 billion to $989 billion.
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