No Christmas creep for online shoppers as Christmas tree sales peak around Cyber Week

The Christmas Creep begins earlier every year as stores seemingly start selling holiday decor right after Halloween. But does this shopping season also start early for online shoppers?  New data from Slice Intelligence about online sales of Christmas trees indicates that the start of online holiday shopping season is still Cyber Week, when nearly a quarter of all artificial trees are bought.

Over the past two years, spending on artificial trees accelerated in the last week of October and topped off the week of November 25th, with the most trees sold the Saturday after Thanksgiving.  Interestingly, there is an additional jump in Christmas tree sales the week of December 23^rd, which represents last minute shoppers, and those hoping to capitalize on late-season sales--another big day to buy Christmas trees is December 26.

Other holiday products like candy canes and ugly sweaters also peak in popularity in the first week of December.

Home Depot is the leader in online Christmas tree sales. Twenty four percent of the revenue generated by tree sales came from the home improvement store over the past two years.  Walmart is the second largest retailer for artificial tree sales, followed by Target.

Size matters when it comes to artificial Christmas trees. Over 70 percent of artificial Christmas trees sold online in the last two years have been over six feet tall.  While most shoppers love tall trees, the most common size is between seven and eight feet tall.

The data also reveals that shoppers are spending more on their artificial Christmas tree this year. While it is still early in the season, shoppers are spending an average of $134 on their artificial Christmas tree this year, compared to $98 in 2015. The number people paying more than $200 is also up this year as 20 percent of shoppers ordered one that cost over $200 in 2016 versus only 10 percent the year before.

Regardless of how much a shopper spent on their tree, there's a good chance they ordered it from South of the Mason-Dixon line. Data shows more artificial Christmas trees are purchased per person in Southern states, with Arkansas decorating the most artificial trees.

By contrast, the Northwestern evergreen states are less prone to buy fake pines. Oregon has the fewest artificial Christmas trees per person up in the holiday season, followed by Wisconsin--the birthplace of this year's White House Christmas tree--and Washington, the Evergreen State.

With a panel of over 4.4 million online shoppers, Slice Intelligence gives the most detailed, and accurate digital commerce data available, and is reported daily.

Slice Intelligence is the only service to measure digital commerce directly from the consumer, across all retailers, at the item level, and over time. Our retailer-independent methodology precisely measures commerce as it happens. By extracting detailed information from hundreds of millions of aggregated and anonymized e-receipts, Slice can map the entire Purchase Graph, connecting each and every consumer to all their purchases.

Slice gets its data from e-receipts – not a browser, app or software installed by the end-user – so its measurement reflects comprehensive shopping behavior across multiple devices, over time which are key in an increasingly omnichannel retail world. Slice Intelligence is the exclusive e-commerce data provider for the NPD’s Checkout Tracking e-commerce service.