InMarket’s 2026 Holiday Shopping InSights
Don’t Miss Decision Season: How Holiday Shopping Got Turned Upside Down
Holiday shopping doesn’t start on Black Friday. It starts before the leaves change color in September and builds up to Halloween. InMarket calls this stretch Decision Season.
Decision Season
The weeks in which a marketer can still change what ends up in a holiday shopper’s cart.
September 2026
October 2026
Most marketing plans still spike around Black Friday. But shoppers are starting months earlier, building lists, browsing stores, and planning budgets.
The data shows that despite economic headwinds, buyer demand is still quite strong. The key is understanding how shoppers shop the holidays, and the influences and touchpoints in their decision-making process.
Decision Season rewards presence early to break into the consideration set, deals during the Cyber 5, and activation during the Final Dash.
Cyber 5
The five-day period between
Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday
November 2026
Final Dash
The week before Christmas,
when store visitation spikes²
December 2026
In this report, we’ll unwrap what’s shifting in the holiday shopping landscape¹: the emergence of AI, surging costs of living, and growing generational divides, and how these insights will not only help cutting-edge marketers show up for Decision Season, but outshine expectations in the most crucial shopping period of the year.
¹Source: InMarket study conducted in partnership with Kantar, who provided the sample data. Based on an online survey of 1,983 US adults fielded in July 2026 and weighted to US Census demographics.
²Source: InMarket commerce data, Jun 2025–Feb 2026. Visit index: weekly in-store transaction volume for each chain, indexed to its own June 2025 baseline (Jun 2025 = 100). Weeks run Monday through Sunday. Peak week is defined as the week with the highest index value across the full window. Black Friday week = week of Nov 24, 2025; pre-Christmas week = week of Dec 15, 2025. Top big box, discount and specialty retailers were ranked by total transaction volume during Nov 2025–Jan 2026 (B&M only): Walmart, Dollar General, Target, Costco, Dollar Tree, Sam’s Club, Family Dollar, T.J. Maxx, Ross Stores, Marshalls.