Mastercard's U.S. holiday survey, released on November 18, 2020, found shoppers adapting gift purchases to the pandemic. Sixty-four percent said they were actively avoiding cash gifts, while the company identified interest in gift cards and mobile payment options.
Local businesses and personal values influenced shopping plans. Seventy-seven percent intended to shop locally, and 75% wanted to be more deliberate about their choice of retailers. Fifty-three percent would rather receive no gift than one from a business conflicting with their values.
The Harris Poll conducted the online survey for Mastercard on October 8–13, 2020, among 2,017 US residents screened for credit-card use. The release lists several overlapping business categories that respondents planned to prioritize. These intentions help explain the article's local-shopping theme, but they do not measure completed purchases or gift-card sales.
Businesses respondents planned to prioritize for 2020 holiday shopping
The Harris Poll asked US residents screened for credit-card use about their holiday plans.
% of respondents
Tap or hover for details. All values are also available in the data table.
Source
Stated intentions from a screened sample, not all-resident spending or gift-card market shares. Categories can overlap and percentages must not be summed.
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| Category | Reported value |
|---|---|
| Small businesses | 78 % of respondents |
| Minority-owned businesses | 68 % of respondents |
| Women-owned businesses | 68 % of respondents |
| Black-owned businesses | 66 % of respondents |
Digital channels were prominent: 82% were likely to shop online and 55% expected to make most purchases that way. More than half planned to ship additional gifts to recipients' homes to reduce personal contact.
Spending intentions varied, but 59% expected to spend at least as much as the previous year. The survey captured intentions during the 2020 pandemic holiday season. Its findings about gifts, retailer preferences and payment methods were not measurements of completed seasonal sales.
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Daniel Brooks
Daniel Brooks covers payment networks, financial technology, payment security, gift card fraud and PCI DSS for Gift Card News.