Hardware Retailing The Industry's Source for Insights and Information
In the October issue of Hardware Retailing, industry and economic experts provide helpful insights into how they believe the holiday shopping season will shape up for 2026. Here are some additional insights into expectations for holiday spending.
Coresight Research anticipates that total U.S. retail sales growth will be 4.4% YoY for Q4, which would beat last year’s holiday statistic. The report also found that larger-than-previous tax refunds earlier this year (up 18.1% on the whole) led to stronger retail sales overall, with about one-third of said refunds being spent in the retail business.
Adobe‘s online shopping forecast for the 2026 holiday season expects U.S. online sales to hit $275.1 billion this holiday season, growing 6.7% year-over-year. Cyber Week is set to see $47.5 billion in online spending, representing 17.3% of the full holiday season spend. Cyber Monday is expected to set a new milestone for U.S. e-commerce, with consumers spending over $15 billion online in a single day and a record 63% of online spend is set to come through mobile devices. The biggest spending categories are expected to be electronics, apparel, furniture, grocery, toys and cosmetics.
The Mastercard Economics Institute’s (MEI) annual holiday forecast for the U.S expects U.S. retail sales, excluding automobiles and gas, to increase 5.5% year over year between November 1 and December 24, based on SpendingPulse insights, which represent in-store and online spending across all forms of payment, the strongest holiday growth since 2022. Online sales are expected to grow 11% year over year but MEI also forecasts 3.6% growth, which would be the strongest showing for physical retail in four years.
