Forrester recently published “A Retailer’s Guide To The 2026 Holiday Season” report, produced annually in partnership with Bizrate Insights. Bizrate Insights shares with Forrester aggregated consumer data for the prior year holiday season, which Forrester incorporates into the research report along with Forrester data and analyst expertise.   

Insights for retailers and brands for the 2026 end of year holiday shopping season

The research for end of year holidays shopping season 2026 indicates that some shoppers have likely already started that shopping – possibly boosted by the Amazon Prime Big Deal Days event in early October. 

Many retailers count on the end-of-year holiday period for a significant percentage of annual sales, so they’ve already been preparing for months. Our research draws on lessons learned during the 2025 holiday shopping season as well as Forrester’s 2026 holiday shopping season “early read” data from this summer. We foresee that US online adults who expect to shop during the 2026 shopping holiday season will: 

  • Continue to shop throughout the holiday season. Among those who shopped for the holidays in 2025, 83% said they finished their shopping in December, regardless of how early or late they started their shopping.
  • Look for value for their money. As of June 2026, 38% of US online adults expect to spend about the same and 19% expect to spend more on end of year holiday shopping than they did in 2025. Another 20% expect to spend less than last year – and the remaining consumers either hadn’t thought about their spending yet or don’t plan to shop for the 2026 end of year holidays. Regardless of their spending plans, almost half of US online adults say they are uncertain about their economic future, per Forrester’s Financial Services Banking Survey, 2026. Not surprisingly, close to half of US online adults told us that they plan to watch for deals and special offers online.
  • Blend digital and store touchpoints to research and buy. Bizrate Insights found that 73% of US online consumers bought at least half of their holiday purchases online in 2025, on par with 2024 data. Forrester’s early read on 2026 holiday shopping plans found that not quite one-third of US online adults expect to check online beforehand to see whether an item is available in the store before going into stores. And almost one-third expect to do more in-person shopping in general for the winter holiday season.

Get Your 2026 Holiday Shopping Experiences Ready

Now is the time to prep thoroughly for the major seasonal shopping events. For example, in 2025, Bizrate Insights found that 53% of US consumers anticipated that Thanksgiving weekend would be their biggest online shopping period.  Particularly during the (often stressful) end of year holiday shopping season, customers expect quick and smooth service, well curated assortments to help them with gift ideas, streamlined checkout and more. To deliver experiences that add to shoppers’ holiday cheer:

  • Run promotions that value-seeking consumers really want. Bizrate Insights found that during the 2025 holiday season, US shoppers prized free shipping (57%) and discounts on total orders (49%).
  • Ensure your customer reviews are easy to find and parse through to instill confidence in shoppers. Many consumers are buying from retailers that may be new to them during this period. Not quite three-quarters of US online adults say ratings and reviews are an important feature for retailers or brands to offer on their websites.
  • Give customers delivery options – and keep them posted on delivery status. More than four out of five US online adults want to receive order confirmation with specific delivery or pickup dates after their online purchase — and almost as many value status update (email, text, or push) notifications. Make sure you’re well-staffed in stores for BOPIS and curbside pickups, particularly once standard shipping deadlines for online orders have passed.

Tune Your Website Search Experiences To Gift–Buying Missions

During the holiday shopping season, shoppers may still visit many of their go-to brands, but their behavior will look very different from the rest of the year. Consumers shopping for gifts may temporarily prioritize recipient needs, budgets, occasions, or categories that do not reflect their normal preferences. The commerce search solution on your site needs to be flexible enough to interpret a shopper’s intent in the moment, rather than relying solely on historical behavior and affinity signals, and it must quickly adjust content accordingly. 

What you can do:

  • Read real-time gift needs. Work with your commerce search vendor to distinguish shoppers’ seasonal intent from long-term preferences. Increase the weight of in-session behavior during holiday shopping and continuously test algorithms to balance known customer preferences with their real-time needs. 
  • Organize search around recipient, occasion, and budget. Create dynamic categories that answer the common gift-shopping questions that answer engines receive, such as low-cost items (e.g., “stocking stuffers”) or universally appealing products in a temporarily featured category (e.g., “the season’s best gifts”).
  • Highlight details that reduce gift-giving risk. Throughout the shopping journey, highlight trust-building information such as inventory availability, shipping deadlines, and extended return policies to avert potential buyer’s remorse and close the sale.

New For Holiday 2026: Machine And Human Shoppers

During the holiday shopping season, shoppers may still visit their go-to brands, but their research and buying decisions will also be shaped by answer engines and AI agents. As of May 2026, more than one-third of US online adults had researched or shopped for products on answer engines such as ChatGPT and Gemini, with Gen Z and millennials outpacing older generations. That means retailers and brands must actively influence how answer engines and shopper agents perceive, rank, and recommend their products — while still delivering useful, trustworthy experiences for human shoppers.

 This year, retailers and brands must: 

  • Dually optimize for AI agents and human shoppers.  AI agents need product information that is easy for them to find (context), understand (fluency), and trust. Make content easy for AI agents to interpret and use with elements such as structured product attributes, buying guides, FAQs, comparison content, materials and sourcing information, shipping and return policies, and reviews. Expand the product content record to application, not just attributes: that is, how your product data answers questions in the conversations that consumers are having. Look across touchpoints for recurring questions that start with “Will it,” “Can it,” “Does it,” and “Will this work with,” and specific questions appropriate for your category or categories. Then test those against answers and keep improving.
  • Strengthen the signals that influence answer-engine visibility. Audit how answer engines show your brand and products, including what customers ask for and about, as they do in their research. Monitor both owned and third-party (non-owned) sources to ensure they consistently surface your deep product expertise. Test whether answer engine crawlers can reliably discover, access, and index critical product and category content. Then, coordinate across content, IT, social media, PR, paid media, brand marketing, information security, and legal teams to augment and strengthen brand authority across answer engines.  

To learn more about preparing for the end of year holiday shopping season, please read the full “A Retailer’s Guide To The 2026 Holiday Season” report, available to clients of Forrester and Bizrate Insights.