Retail guide for the winter holiday season

The 2021 holiday shopping season may seem a long way off for most people. But in the marketing world, we are in 100% preparation mode for a dynamic and unpredictable peak retail period.

The 2020 holiday season was the biggest ever for digital sales, with $1.1 trillion (€836 billion) in global sales, up 50% from the previous year. It’s impossible to predict exact holiday revenue figures for 2021 — especially amidst the COVID-19 pandemic — but we know the trend towards online purchasing will continue to grow. Euromonitor predicts the share of e-commerce sales will grow in both Poland and Czech Republic. In Poland it will grow to 19% in 2025, up from 14% in 2020, and in Czech Republic to 23% in 2025, up from 17% in 2020.

“My research team has seen the shift towards digital shopping is here to stay,” says Debadeep Bandyopadhyay, a Google research analyst overseeing Search trends across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. “People aren’t just going online to buy. They are browsing. There’s sustained interest in online window shopping and searches for inspirational shopping ideas.”

To ensure your brand is there to help customers with their purchasing decisions, our team has published a new 2021 retail playbook to help you:

Reach customers as they browse
Engage customers as they research
Convert customers looking to purchase
Be ready to drive sales during the holidays

Think of this as your peak season cheat sheet:

For those reading in a rush, here are some of the most compelling stats we’ve pulled from the report and our internal Google databases:

A black-and-white illustration shows a calendar page. There is a yellow overlaid arrow on top pointing up. The text says “In Q4, retail searches grew at a rate over 3X higher than the same time last year.”

Think with Google

Source: Google Internal Data, Global English, Q4 2020 vs. Q4 2019.

A black-and-white illustration shows a credit card inside a stylised pie chart with some yellow overlaid colour. The text says “39% of surveyed consumers say they are buying more online now than they were a year ago.”

Think with Google

Source: Google/Ipsos, US, CA, UK, FR, DE, IT, AU, JP, RU, IN, CN, BR, MX, ES, ZA, KR, Google commissioned Ipsos COVID-19 tracker, n=1000 online consumers, 18+ per market, April 8-11, 2021.

A black-and-white illustration shows a Google Search results page, overlaid with a stylised yellow pie chart. The text says “More than half of surveyed consumers say they use Search to research their in-store purchases.”

Think with Google

Source: Google/Ipsos, US, CA, UK, FR, DE, IT, AU, JP, RU, IN, CN, BR, MX, ES, ZA, Google commissioned Ipsos COVID-19 tracker, n=1000 online consumers, 18+ per market, September 10-13, 2020.

A black-and-white illustration shows a shopping cart illustration on a mobile phone screen. The phone sits within a stylised yellow pie chart. The text says “53% of shoppers expect to make a purchase on their smartphone from any company with a site or app

Think with Google

Source: Google/Ipsos, US, CA, UK, FR, DE, IT, AU, JP, RU, IN, CN, BR, MX, ES, ZA, KR, Google commissioned Ipsos COVID-19 tracker, online 18+ smartphone users varying by market, ~n=840-1000 online consumers 18+ per market, May 28-31, 2020.