Consumer Behavior
Most American consumers feel positive about 2025
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January 17, 2025
Two-thirds of American consumers are feeling positive about what 2025 will bring but 54% will be spending cautiously and 74% will be more likely to buy a cheaper brand to save some money.
Those are findings from the fifth annual "US Consumer Trends" report from Attest, a research firm, on trends that will shape 2025.
The research included a survey of 2,000 nationally representative working-age U.S. consumers.
Additional findings include:
- While a sizable minority of consumers don't want brands to delve into sensitive or political issues (28%), a majority do, with poverty and inequality (37%) being the top issue people want to hear from brands on. This is followed by racism and women's rights (both at 26%). Notably, there's been a -6 percentage point decline in desire for brands to take a stance on gun violence (to 22%).
- The number of consumers who say they shop "mostly" or "always" online declined markedly by -13 percentage points (to 26%) compared to last year (39%).
- A rebound in in-store shopping is being led by Gen Z, following a -15 percentage point decline in habitual online shopping among this demographic. Young shoppers are also less likely to shop on social media than they were a year ago (down from 18.5% to 12.5%). However, Gen Z is the demographic most likely to use an AI search engine; 36.5% use one at least half the time they do a search (compared to 16% of consumers in general). Consumers with an income over $100k also over-index for using AI for search (30% use it "most" or "all" of the time).
