Holiday Shoppers Prefer “Brick-and-Mortar” this Year

Americans will do more of their holiday shopping in stores this year than online, according to a new survey from ecoATM.

EcoATM – which operates device recycling kiosks –said it commissioned a poll of 1,000 consumers age 18 or older, and found that old-fashioned brick-and-mortar retailers will be seeing more customers than online retailers will.

However, they may not be seeing as many as expected on Black Friday or Cyber Monday: the survey found that only 18% of Americans plan to do their shopping on Black Friday, and just 7% on Cyber Monday.

This compares with the 44% who plan do the majority of their gift buying during the first few weeks of December.

EcoATM found that free shipping and other online holiday deals will not be keeping consumers out of traditional stores. In fact:

Of those polled, 61% plan to shop at discount retail stores such as Target, while a slightly lower 57% plan to buy at online sites such as Amazon or eBay.

Thirty six percent plan to go to shopping malls, while 32% will shop at department stores such as Macys or Bloomingdales. 23% plan to shop at specialty retail stores such as Apple, Gap and the Sports Authority.

It will be interesting to see how all of this pans out in reality. After all, saying that you are avoiding Black Friday and Cyber Monday has become the trendy thing to do. And with so many planning last-minute gift buying, do we really believe that they will choose to schlep down to stores rather than avail themselves of the convenience of the Internet?

The suspense won’t last long, since Black Friday is here. We’ll see the actual retail numbers for this holiday season soon enough.